to pre- or not to pre-

[KenCunningham]

Just read an interesting piece in 'Computing' (UK) magazine, asking why prepending 'pre-' on to words like book and so on seems to have become something of a habit. Surely to book something implies that it's been done in advance, so the pre- in pre-book is superfluous unless perhaps we're talking about before the general availability of the item/event in question?

 

[Trevoke]

The words of George Carlin (warning, might not be PG, some cursing):

Anyway, as part of this ‘boarding process,’ they say, “We would like to pre-board.” Well, what exactly is that, anyway? What does it mean to ‘pre-board’, you get on before you get on?

That’s another complaint of mine: too much use of this prefix ‘pre-,’ it’s all over the language now, ‘pre-’ this, ‘pre-’ that. “Place the turkey in a pre-heated oven.” That’s ridiculous, there’s only two states an oven can possibly exist in, heated or un-heated! ‘Pre-heated’ is a meaningless fucking term. It’s like ‘pre-recorded,’ “this program was pre-recorded,” well of course it was pre-recorded, when else are you gonna record it, afterwards? That’s the whole purpose of recording, to do it beforehand. Otherwise, it doesn’t really work, does it?

‘Pre-existing,’ ‘pre-planning,’ ‘pre-screening.’ You know what I tell these people? “Pre-suck my genital situation!” And, they seem to understand what I’m talking about.

"That time in Seattle... was a nightmare. I came out of it dead broke, without a house, without anything except a girlfriend and a knowledge of UNIX."
"Well, that's something," Avi says. "Normally those two are mutually exclusive."
-- Neal Stephenson, "Cryptonomicon"

 

[KenCunningham]

Thanks for that Trevoke ;-) I can understand it's use in a phrase like pre-ignition, ie a state where something is lit in preparation for something larger or more powerful being lit by it (if that makes sense!), but the pre-booking really hit a nerve.

 

[RCorrigan]

The apparel industry uses the term pre-book quite a lot.
Mainly placing orders before either their manufacture or release (seasonal etc) is a "Pre-book" ... it also makes it easier if returns are needed as there are conditions on pre-books that do not apply if product is booked for delivery after it has been manufactured or after the seasonal release.(Hope that makes sense!!! )

<Do I need A Signature or will an X do?>

 

[KenCunningham]

Makes sense to me RCorrigan, in the way I mentioned to mean 'before general availability'.

 

[flapeyre]

We have a "pre-booking" application (it checks contracts for errors prior to the actual booking).

"Pre-ignition", to me, means the state prior to ignition. It's misleading at best to apply it to an actual state of ignition, however it might occur; in that context, I prefer "dieseling" (to describe an engine that won't stop after the ignition is cut off).

Having said that, "pre-board" should be "board first", and "pre-heat" ought to be just "heat".

Feles mala! Cur cista non uteris? Stramentum novum in ea posui!

 

[columb]

preheat is a perfectly valid term where an oven is brought to cooking temperature before the food is inserted. It's as valid as pre-book anyway (or is 'valid' an absolute!). Once again it implies an action before the main event.

My favourite redundancy is right there in that Jose Feliciano (or Doors if you prefer) clasic 'Light My Fire' but I guess it wouldn't scan if the word funeral was deleted.

Columb Healy

 

[KingfisherINC]

An co-worker once described the action of bringing forward a delivery date as "...The date for X has been preponed"
(as in the opposite of postponed I guess!) - made me smile.

Kingfisher

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,
Pre-heat (when referring to an oven, anyway) should logically be pre-cook - you are heating not pre-heating.

A Pre-Heated oven is the same as an unheated oven..






To Paraphrase:"The Help you get is proportional to the Help you give.."

 

[Trevoke]

No, not exactly.

A pre-heated oven is "an oven which you have brought to the proper heat before this precise point in time".

Still kinda redundant, but it makes sense.

"That time in Seattle... was a nightmare. I came out of it dead broke, without a house, without anything except a girlfriend and a knowledge of UNIX."
"Well, that's something," Avi says. "Normally those two are mutually exclusive."
-- Neal Stephenson, "Cryptonomicon"

 

[mjldba]

My girlfriend used to tell me she was pre-worrying about a CPR licensing test she had to take annually. I told her she was, in fact, already worrying because it's impossible to pre-worry.

Her interpretation: she was worrying a little before she invariably had to worry alot, hence pre-worrying.

 

[tsdragon]

I still don't see any difference between a preheated oven and a heated oven. They are both heated already. Is there a difference in the temperature between the two. I don't believe so. If the oven isn't preheated, what is it? Unheated is the only thing I can think of.

Tracy Dryden

Meddle not in the affairs of dragons,
For you are crunchy, and good with mustard.

 

[KenCunningham]

flapeyre, interesting that you use 'dieseling' for an engine that won't stop after the ignition is turned off. Here in the UK (at least to my knowledge) it's simply 'running-on'.

 

[flapeyre]

Ken:

In the days before fuel injection, dieseling was common if your gasoline/petrol didn't have a high enough octane rating. The Diesel engines of the era were (and still are) very noisy, and a dieseling engine sounded similar, hence the label.

Nowadays, in the USA, most cars are designed to run on fuel with an octane rating of at least 87, so it isn't much of an issue. In the 70's, my mother's 1968 Oldsmobile Cutlass with that huge V8 needed premium to keep it from pinging and dieseling when it was shut off.

Feles mala! Cur cista non uteris? Stramentum novum in ea posui!

 

[Mike Lewis]

There's surely a big difference between pre-book, pre-plan, etc. and the likes of pre-heat.

In pre-book, the "pre" refers to the booking being done in advance of the bookings, which is obviously nonsense. It's just a meaningless affectation.

In pre-heating, the heating is done in advance of placing the food in the oven, which makes perfect sense, both linguistically and from a cooking point of view.

Put another way .... given that it's desirable to switch the oven on and let it reach a certain temperature before you insert the food, how else would you express that concept in such a concise way as "pre-heat"?

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My Visual FoxPro site: www.ml-consult.co.uk

 

[tsdragon]

What's wrong with just "heat" the oven?

Tracy Dryden

Meddle not in the affairs of dragons,
For you are crunchy, and good with mustard.

 

[CajunCenturion]

==> What's wrong with just "heat" the oven?

That doesn't provide any information about whether or not the food should or should not be in the oven during the heating up period.

--------------
Good Luck
To get the most from your Tek-Tips experience, please read FAQ181-2886
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,
'Heat the oven to 350 and then place the food in' could be the instruction.

Admittedly, most people know what pre-heat means, but that does not make it logical ( or accurate)..


( Also, most energy saving articles indicate that doing this wastes energy..Put the food in, turn the oven on and adjust cooking time)...





To Paraphrase:"The Help you get is proportional to the Help you give.."

 

[Mike Lewis]

Tracy,

What's wrong with just "heat" the oven?

As Cajun says, that doesn't indicate that the heating should be done before inserting the food.

most energy saving articles indicate that doing this wastes energy

That might be true from an energy point of view, but not from a culinary one.

If you're cooking stew or a casserole, you might as well insert the dish and switch the oven on at the same. It doesn't make much difference.

But if your baking bread, it makes a huge difference. With yeast-based breads, the oven's got to be hot enough to kill the yeast immediately. Otherwise, the finished product will be terrible (I speak from experience). When baking with baking powder (baking soda), it's even more important. The powder will start reacting as soon as the temperature is slightly above room temperature. If it takes more than a few minutes to reach the temperature at which the dough will bake, you'll risk the reaction being finished before the baking, which will result in a flat loaf.

Mike


__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

My Visual FoxPro site: www.ml-consult.co.uk

 

[Stella740pl]

Hi Mike!
Nice to meet you here.

You mentioned in this and the other thread that what you call baking powder is the same as what we call baking soda. It's not. We have baking powder here, too - sodium bicarbonate with whatever acid or other ingredients added to it.

I just buy plain old baking soda, just sodium bicarbonate with nothing else, for its many uses. We use it as a cleaning agent (say, it’s great for removing a film of tea from cups), as a mild antacid, and also for baking (infrequent) cakes (I don’t do bread) where my mother’s recipes call for it. In some, they should react with vinegar right in front of your eyes when you add them both (in a proportion of about ¼ to ½ of a teaspoon of soda to 1 tablespoon of vinegar); and in some, you put soda and buttermilk in the batter, and they react later, in the hot oven.

But I agree, pre- indicates that the heating is done before inserting food, and it could be very important for some dishes.

Stella