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Mon, 05 Jul 2004
Musings from the grammar-obsessed
Remember that old joke about how if pro is the opposite of con, then the opposite of congress must be progress? (hah hah hah) We've been giving a lot of thought this issue, and while we haven't fully figured out how these prefixes work, we've certainly come up with some fun observations:
1. Contest (accent on test) & protest: definitely not opposites. In fact, isn't protesting something a way of indicating that you'd like to contest it? A contest (accent on con), on the other hand, is something else entirely (I'd like to contest the results of the contest). And then there's detest--like I protest the war because I detest war.
2. Conduct and product: Especially given that a duct is an "enclosed passage or channel," I'm not sure what to make of the relationship between these two words.
3. A new version of the joke: if con is the opposite of pro, does that mean the opposite of Constitution is Prostitution?