preventative

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sbwertz

sbwertz

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Am I the only one that this word grates on the ear? What is wrong with "preventive" after all? The verb is "prevent" not "preventate." I hear it on radio and tv all the time and it is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.

Almost as bad as "a whole nother" which I heard just yesterday on a local radio station.
 
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Agreed.
And how does one predrill a hole?
Another one that I can't stand is "hack". To me that's a cab driver or chopping a bush or hacking into my computer or web site, not a helpful hint.
 
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From Learners Dictionary:

Question
What is the difference between preventive and preventative? – Leah, United States

Answer
There is virtually no difference between preventive and preventative. Both words are adjectives that mean, "used to stop something bad from happening." Both words are most often used to talk about health care, in phrases such as these:

Preventive/preventative care
Preventive/preventative health care
Preventive/preventative medicine (a field of medicine)
Preventive/preventative services
Preventive/preventative measures
Finally, both preventive and preventative are used most frequently in academic language and least frequently in fiction.

The one clear difference between the two words is that the shorter one, preventive, is used much more frequently than preventative, possibly three or four times as much, depending on which sources you check.

The bottom line is, you should feel free to use either one of these words to describe something that stops something bad from happening. However, be aware that you may encounter writers, editors, and grammarians who believe that preventive is better, older, and more correct than preventative. None of this is true, but if you want to avoid any conflict, use preventive.

That said, I tend to use "preventative" as a noun- e.g. "Take this as a preventative" which just seems more natural. I tend toward "preventive" as an adjective, e.g. "He is a specialist in preventive medicine".
 
Here are others or similar (they don't grate on me, but I hear/see them all of the time):
At this point in time...
Irregardless
Peruse (means to examine carefully, not skim)
Orientated
Incentivize
Judgment (is not supposed to have an e after the g, but now some dictionaries recognize it.
I am anxious versus I am eager

Fun stuff!
 
Monty said:
Agreed.
And how does one predrill a hole?
Another one that I can't stand is "hack". To me that's a cab driver or chopping a bush or hacking into my computer or web site, not a helpful hint.
Click to expand...

hmm...I can see "predrill" is emphasizing for clarity that you are drilling the hole in preparation and to facilitate the next step- unnecessary mayhaps, but I woudnt say wrong. To me it gently reminds the hack woodworker to not just ram that screw into the bare wood, no matter how tempted, as a preventative to splitting the wood.

Cardiologists uniformly refer to "pre-dilating" a coronary lesion with a balloon, prior to deploying a stent for pretty much the same reason. Since one could dilate the lesion just by expanding the stent, or "drill" the hole with the screw, "pre" emphasizes the advisability of splitting the process into two steps.
 
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TonyL said:
Here are others or similar (they don't grate on me, but I hear/see them all of the time):
At this point in time...
Irregardless
Peruse (means to examine carefully, not skim)
Orientated
Incentivize
Judgment (is not supposed to have an e after the g, but now some dictionaries recognize it.
I am anxious versus I am eager

Fun stuff!
Click to expand...

Early on, I was once admonished for having referred to somebody as nauseous when the proper term should have been nauseated. If I am nauseated, I feel unwell. If I am nauseous, I make you feel unwell. In truth, it's a picayune point as language use has evolved to where there really is no longer a distinction.
 
Sharon,

There are some things that used to get to me and I have finally learned to tolerate them. The incorrect use of the written words "to, too and two" used to bother me enormously, until I noticed my spell checker changing one of mine before I finished writing. The other grating was the misuse of "there, their and they're". Now I just accept it. :wink:

I have lived among so many cultures that I find it amusing in many cases. I was in Singapore with my wife and a lady got on the elevators with us at the hotel we were staying in. We had seen her the day before in the restaurant to which we were heading. She noticed the 2nd floor button pushed and said "That is where I am going". My wife asked "Are you going to breakfast?" She said "You betcha!"
I replied, "You are from Minnesota!" She answered, No, I am from California . . . but my parents were from Minnesota!

". . . whole nother world" - cultural sayings. It can grate on you for sure. I was in a "Coaching" seminar (in the Tokyo area) a few years ago and the "teacher" used examples of terrible coaching by showing shots from Andy Griffin and making fun of them. That made several Southerners a little irritated! :biggrin:

After my 25+ years in Japan, I came back and worked with churches in the area the area in which I grew up. Under my work was a clothes ministry for the heavy generational poverty in this area. A supervisor and two organizationally gifted volunteer ladies could not get one (generational poverty) volunteer to do the work required. They came to me. I went to talk with her and in 5 minutes had the generational poverty volunteer was doing exactly what the other three wanted. They asked me how I was able to do that. I replied: "Because I know Japanese." They looked at me like I was crazy. Then I said, "Direct communication in Japanese is rude! You have to use polite form (indirect). To Generational Poverty mindset, "direct/commanding like" talk like DHS, police and bosses do - that puts the GP mindset on the defensive and they don't hear what is said. Individual Cultures use different methods of communication and different words too! And they change the meanings of words too!

There were phrases that Aussies used that made Americans wonder what was going on, and the same vice versa. And at the same time, we did not have that problem with British citizens. "I'll give you a tinkle" has different meanings in different places. It is colloquial but it communicates. In the USA, the south, the NE, the Mid West, the SW, West all have their "language". And it used to drive me nuts until I learned that was their communication method.
 
Another irritating item is folks starting a sentence with "Me and..."

Too often, I hear (and read) folks use the word "busted" when referring to something that is broken. I thought "Busted" meant you were caught doing something you shouldn't have been doing.
 
Mine is the word "moot". It's a moot point actually means the point is debatable and open for discussion. In current usage it means the opposite. The noun moot is a place where debates are held.
 
I'm a complete grammar libertarian. So long as I understand what you mean, it's all good. One of the beauties of language is that it does evolve, if you like it ossified, learn Latin.
So feel free to aks me anything. I'll keep on wearing my inflammable sleeve in the glass studio, to me it's a moot point.

Butcept maybe that flammable/inflammable thing could turn out dangerous. Let's fix that, then let it be...
 
I'm often called a "nit picker". It's my favorite instrument.
What amazes me is the immigrant (preferably legal) that comes to this country and is introduced to the English language. For those of us that grew up using English naturally, the many nuances must be very confusing.
 
Early on, I was once admonished for having referred to somebody as nauseous
when the proper term should have been nauseated. If I am nauseated, I feel
unwell. If I am nauseous, I make you feel unwell. In truth, it's a picayune
point as language use has evolved to where there really is no longer a
distinction.
Click to expand...

I have corrected my wife and son on that for decades. That is one of my favorites.

See Charles Harrington Elster, he cites dozens of misused words in a humorous way.

I win the most bets with "peruse".
 
How about "waiting with baited breath." Just what was it baited with? Bated breath means holding your breath.

And I won't even touch on affect and effect.

I taught English as a Second Language for many years. I have had my students reduced to tears by ough. Just think about it....tough, cough, plough, through, and dough are all pronounced differently in English.
 
Champing at the bit is my downfall. I keep wanting to ask how badly the teeth were injured when one chomped on a solid metal bar. Champing means the horse is pulling at the reins in order to start running.

And don't get me started on psychology/psychiatry...
 
leehljp said:
Sharon,

There are some things that used to get to me and I have finally learned to tolerate them. The incorrect use of the written words "to, too and two" used to bother me enormously, until I noticed my spell checker changing one of mine before I finished writing. The other grating was the misuse of "there, their and they're". Now I just accept it. :wink:

I have lived among so many cultures that I find it amusing in many cases. I was in Singapore with my wife and a lady got on the elevators with us at the hotel we were staying in. We had seen her the day before in the restaurant to which we were heading. She noticed the 2nd floor button pushed and said "That is where I am going". My wife asked "Are you going to breakfast?" She said "You betcha!"
I replied, "You are from Minnesota!" She answered, No, I am from California . . . but my parents were from Minnesota!

". . . whole nother world" - cultural sayings. It can grate on you for sure. I was in a "Coaching" seminar (in the Tokyo area) a few years ago and the "teacher" used examples of terrible coaching by showing shots from Andy Griffin and making fun of them. That made several Southerners a little irritated! :biggrin:

After my 25+ years in Japan, I came back and worked with churches in the area the area in which I grew up. Under my work was a clothes ministry for the heavy generational poverty in this area. A supervisor and two organizationally gifted volunteer ladies could not get one (generational poverty) volunteer to do the work required. They came to me. I went to talk with her and in 5 minutes had the generational poverty volunteer was doing exactly what the other three wanted. They asked me how I was able to do that. I replied: "Because I know Japanese." They looked at me like I was crazy. Then I said, "Direct communication in Japanese is rude! You have to use polite form (indirect). To Generational Poverty mindset, "direct/commanding like" talk like DHS, police and bosses do - that puts the GP mindset on the defensive and they don't hear what is said. Individual Cultures use different methods of communication and different words too! And they change the meanings of words too!

There were phrases that Aussies used that made Americans wonder what was going on, and the same vice versa. And at the same time, we did not have that problem with British citizens. "I'll give you a tinkle" has different meanings in different places. It is colloquial but it communicates. In the USA, the south, the NE, the Mid West, the SW, West all have their "language". And it used to drive me nuts until I learned that was their communication method.
Click to expand...

I remember the shock when a British exchange student offered to come "knock you up" in the morning. Not everyone in Britain has a phone, so if you wanted to wake someone up in the morning, you went over and knocked on the door.
 
What's ironic... people that are well versed on a subject, and take pride in criticizing those that don't measure up to their standards.
Yet, those people, never look in the mirror, and realize their deficiencies.
Every single person is gifted in their own way, and they also have their shortcomings.
We were not created perfect, and one will never achieve perfection.

It's a diverse world, it is.
 
Words are fun ! . I wonder if there is a participatory forum like this one where exchanges like this are going on all the time ... how would I search ? :confused:
 
Shock me said:
I'm a complete grammar libertarian. So long as I understand what you mean, it's all good. One of the beauties of language is that it does evolve, if you like it ossified, learn Latin.
So feel free to aks me anything. I'll keep on wearing my inflammable sleeve in the glass studio, to me it's a moot point.

Butcept maybe that flammable/inflammable thing could turn out dangerous. Let's fix that, then let it be...
Click to expand...



Grammer Libertarian? I love it!
I've been a Spelling Libertarian most of my life. "It's a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word." (Andrew Jackson). Mark Twain has been quoted with a similar sentiment.

Danny


Sent from my iPhone using Penturners.org mobile app
 
Terredax said:
What's ironic... people that are well versed on a subject, and take pride in criticizing those that don't measure up to their standards.

Yet, those people, never look in the mirror, and realize their deficiencies.

Every single person is gifted in their own way, and they also have their shortcomings.

We were not created perfect, and one will never achieve perfection.



It's a diverse world, it is.
Click to expand...



Maybe hypocritical, not really ironic.

I think I just fell for your trap.


Sent from my iPhone using Penturners.org mobile app
 
I know a guy who uses the word "stratalagize" instead of strategy. Every time he says it the hole room laughs. I still don't think he ever got why everyone was laughing. He did quit drinking though, now he just smokes a lot of pot. Go figure.
 
More4dan said:
Shock me said:
I'm a complete grammar libertarian. So long as I understand what you mean, it's all good. One of the beauties of language is that it does evolve, if you like it ossified, learn Latin.
So feel free to aks me anything. I'll keep on wearing my inflammable sleeve in the glass studio, to me it's a moot point.

Butcept maybe that flammable/inflammable thing could turn out dangerous. Let's fix that, then let it be...
Click to expand...

Grammer Libertarian? I love it!
I've been a Spelling Libertarian most of my life. "It's a damn poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word." (Andrew Jackson). Mark Twain has been quoted with a similar sentiment.

Danny

Sent from my iPhone using Penturners.org mobile app
Click to expand...

On the other hand . . . I know personally the loss in revenue from misspelling a word, I have friends who had great interviews but lost the job to ones that could spell better; Words communicate but when it gets to writing, context is harder to follow and a misspelled word or comma in the wrong place changes everything.

I went to an "active shooter response" training tonight. Believe it or not, one illustration was on the fact that the lady that took the 911 call from a deranged man asking for help. She call didn't spell the name right and transposed a phone number, and gave that to the police; two days later numerous people were killed by that man. Most of you know of this event 20+ years ago but I won't name it. Spelling IS important; lives can get lost from misspelled names, addresses, etc. Police were looking for the wrong person by two letters. Don't say that good spelling is not important!

On a lighter note, I had an excellent English teacher in the 7th and 8th grade. Taught us by diagramming. IN the 10th grade, our high school teacher gave us a grammar test. I got my paper back and missed one thing. I told the teacher she was wrong. The fact that the comma was in a specific place changed the whole context of the sentence. She looked and looked an finally agreed with me. Then she asked the class: "How many of you had this sentence marked as correct on the test?" About 3/4 of them did. She said hand your papers back in;" Thanks to Hank, you will now have your grade lowered!" :rolleyes:

BTW, in my 1-3 grades, we had an "English" teacher from the Queen's English. Grey, Colour, Catalogue, One Billion American was 1000 million to a Brit (or at least it used to be.)
 
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comma.png


Edit: my bad, I thought the image would be inserted. Maybe after the migration...
 
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Shock me said:
I'm a complete grammar libertarian. So long as I understand what you mean, it's all good. One of the beauties of language is that it does evolve, if you like it ossified, learn Latin.
So feel free to aks me anything. I'll keep on wearing my inflammable sleeve in the glass studio, to me it's a moot point.

Butcept maybe that flammable/inflammable thing could turn out dangerous. Let's fix that, then let it be...
Click to expand...

Are you as consistent being a "numerical" libertarian as you are as a grammar libertarian - when it come to people writing your pay checks? :biggrin:

IOW - Why is the spelling in words not important but numbers in a check are?
 
leehljp said:
Words communicate but when it gets to writing, context is harder to follow and a misspelled word or comma in the wrong place changes everything.)
Click to expand...


A woman without her man is nothing.


A woman: without her, man is nothing.


I've always wondered what the airlines mean by "Pre-boarding" Boarding before you board?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mfz3kFNVopk
 
My son is a PhD in microbiology and genetic engineering at Yale. He has a real problem with spelling because he tries to make it logical! For example, he says "most" should be spelled "moast" pronounced like "boast" because "most" would be pronounced like "lost"

He thanks the spelling gods for spell checker every day.
 
Thanks Sharon, fun thread. I just learned about my improper use of moot and peruse. Learned Japanese along the way.

Had some laughs and I could care less if I get anything else accomplished today.
 
My pet peeve is the use of all the anagrams/initials for things... especially the ailments they are trying to sell medication for... when reading and I run across one I don't know or remember it stops my reading until I find out what they're talking about.
 
Charlie_W said:
News reporter: " The victim was shot in the parking lot and......"



I don't have any part on my body called "parking lot"!



How about: "The victim was shot while in the parking lot and......"
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, there are many people who do have body parts that could be called a parking lot.

I had a problem with proper grammar because it is not the same as what is used most of the time in books. It gets confusing.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk
 
I believe that the basis of life is simplicity. With that, y'all can keep your big words. Communication is a key element of life and if one cannot communicate on the base level then one is missing out on some enjoyable conversations. Some of my most memorable talks have been with my young grandchildren. If they had spoken like the Scarecrow after he had gotten a brain, the conversations would have faded into the past.
 
leehljp said:
Shock me said:
I'm a complete grammar libertarian. So long as I understand what you mean, it's all good.
Click to expand...

Are you as consistent being a "numerical" libertarian as you are as a grammar libertarian - when it come to people writing your pay checks? :biggrin:

IOW - Why is the spelling in words not important but numbers in a check are?
Click to expand...

No, that's a false analogy. As I said, what's important is that your meaning is understood. In the case of my paycheck, the bank will not understand what was meant, they will cash the check literally as written and an error will result. I'm not at all tolerant of error.

Spelling certainly is important when a misspelling garbles meaning as in my self-inflicted example above where I tried to imbed an image, but failed to completely remove the auto-inserted url stem and "hhttps: ..." could not be resolved.

So long as the meaning is clear, I could (sic) care less if somebody uses "preventative", "pre-drill", "nauseous" or "champing" and Faulkner is still free to have Dewey Dell say "me and Lafe was picking on down the row". That's how people talk and how language evolves. There's too many real problems to let these become pet peeves or bother me. It seems to me that most guardians of grammar believe that language is permanently fixed, usually at precisely where it was when they began to learn grammar in the third grade
 
ajollydds said:
Thanks Sharon, fun thread. I just learned about my improper use of moot and peruse. Learned Japanese along the way.

Had some laughs and I could care less if I get anything else accomplished today.
Click to expand...


Now that raises a sticky point with me ... the use of "could care less" versus "could NOT care less" ... together with the competing conjunctions "if" or "about" or "whether" ...

Do you mean what you said (which is pretty garbled and may have no meaning at all when analyzed) ...

... or do you mean "I could NOT care less about getting anything else accomplished today." ??

:biggrin::biggrin::biggrin::eek::rolleyes:
 
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mbroberg said:
leehljp said:
Words communicate but when it gets to writing, context is harder to follow and a misspelled word or comma in the wrong place changes everything.)
Click to expand...


A woman without her man is nothing.


A woman: without her, man is nothing.


I've always wondered what the airlines mean by "Pre-boarding" Boarding before you board?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mfz3kFNVopk
Click to expand...

How about "Final approach" when flying. That really bothers me. Do they know something I don't?
 
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