BREAKING THE RULES
The Pedant Class and Your Stars
N some countries it is perfectly normal for children to have a small glass of wine with dinner, but in Hong Kong recently there was much frothing over a beer advertisement which seemed to be aimed at schoolchildren.
“THE PREFECT BEER FOR THIS PERFECT MOMENT” screamed a giant billboard at Hong Kong’s MTR station. Did this mean school pupils who performed well enough to earn a prefect’s badge also deserved a special brew?
Not according to the advertiser. A somewhat embarrassed spokesman for Kronenbourg beer claimed that it was merely a typographical error, much to the disappointment of the prefects.
Prefects used to be allowed to drink. The first prefects were Roman and were fond of an amphora or two, as any Asterix fan will know. In France and Italy certain officials are still given the title Prefect, but in most other parts of the world a prefect is “a schoolchild appointed to a position of limited power over his fellows”, according to Collins English Dictionary. Prefects can also be girls, as any Harry Potter fan will know, but let’s leave the he/she/they debate for another day.
Incidentally, in the late 1970s there was a punk rock band in northern England called The Prefects. They released their first album a year after they split up, which seems entirely preposterous but there you have it.
The word “prefect” is a combination of the Latin prefix pre meaning “before” or “in front” and fect the past tense of facere, meaning “to make”, which adds up to someone put in front or ahead.
In some posh British schools, prefects are called “praeposters”, the Middle English term that evolved from Latin. Given the nature of the rules and punishments they impose, it is no accident that “preposterous” (originally spelt praeposterous) comes from the same root. “Preposterous” combines “before” (pre) and “behind” (posterus) which can be translated as putting the cart before the horse, or simply absurd.
Words beginning with “pre” cause endless misery to those attempting to learn English. Not even the world’s most rigid prefect can make them conform to any set of rules.
Take “prefix” (which is not the name of a Roman character in an Asterix book, although it could be). If one were to pull it apart, a prefix could be whatever substance a drug addict imbibes before getting a proper fix. It could also be what a mender of things does to prime a broken object before actually repairing it.
Then there is “prescience” which comes from the Latin praescire — pre (before) plus scire (to know) — and means foreknowledge. Without knowing this, anyone might think that prescience was something else entirely — the state of medical science before antibiotics were invented, perhaps, or the break before science class.
If we analyse words in this way, “presumptuous” would be a scruffy old house before the refurbishers got hold of it. “Preoccupied” would be the same house, restored and decorated but standing empty until the occupants move in.
“Present” would describe all those e-mails still sitting in the drafts folder. “Prepared” would be potatoes with their skins still on and “preserved” would be food waiting for a waiter to serve it. “Predetermined” would refer to the state of wishy-washy apathy that precedes making up one’s mind to definitely do something, a “preamble” would mean putting on one’s shoes in readiness for a stroll in the park, and “premature” would simply be children.
What we really need is a squad of prestidigitating prefects to prescribe a cure for this state of preternatural chaos. Wouldn’t that be prefab? LS