“Unraveling the Mystery: Why Do We Love to Prefix Our Words with ‘Pre’?”
In 2020, the Associated Press Stylebook officially surrendered in its long-standing battle against the word “preheat.” Yes, you read that correctly! The AP acknowledged that while the term may seem redundant—why not just say “heat” your oven?—the majority of us prefer to preheat it. After all, most recipes use “preheat,” and let’s face it, your oven likely has a button that says just that. It’s a classic linguistic conundrum: why do we throw around prefixes like “pre-” before words that don’t seem to need them? From “pre-existing” to “prerecorded,” it’s almost like we have a collective urge to add a dash of drama to our everyday language. But is that so bad? Dive into this delightful exploration of our linguistic quirks and discover why preheating—and its companions—aren’t going away any time soon! [LEARN MORE](https://www.mentalfloss.com/the-reason-we-add-pre-before-so-many-words?utm_source=RSS#inline-text-5).
In 2020, the Associated Press Stylebook finally waved a white flag in the war against preheat.
“Yes, it’s redundant,” the organization wrote on Facebook. “But overwhelmingly, we heard it’s what you want to use. It might be accurate to simply say that you heat your oven, rather than preheat it, but since recipes use preheat and your oven probably has a preheat setting, we updated {the stylebook} to reflect common use.”
Some commenters piped up in support of preheat, while others just scorned the term’s distant cousins—preexisting, prerecorded, preboard. “I’ll preheat the oven but I won’t preregister for events no matter what!” one person wrote. Another referenced a classic George Carlin bit about the prefix: “What does it mean to preboard, do you get on before you get on?”
