Am I the only person driven insane by the just-slightly-off and constant use of the word "prior"* when what is meant is "before" or "earlier" or "previously"? I know it's a fine line, but what I'm seeing is borderline incorrect. It's ugly. Gen X loves it.
Why do I not like this usage? I'll show you:
Seventeen years prior, he had a bad experience.
(Or even:) He had a bad experience seventeen years prior.
But this is wrong. It could be "Seventeen years prior TO THIS, he had a bad experience" and it wouldn't bother me, although I'd prefer "Seventeen years earlier, he'd had a bad experience" or "Seventeen years ago, he had a bad experience," but the use of prior just runs all over me in that construction.
Why, though?
The Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary has these definitions:
1 earlier in time or order : preceding temporally, causally, or psychologically : antecedent, previous
<a prior appointment>
<prior consideration>
2 taking precedence logically, methodologically, or in importance or value — usually followed by to
<a responsibility prior to all others>
In these illustrations, the "prior" takes the classic adjectival position, before (or prior to) the noun it modifies. In the usage that drives me crazy, it seems to be being misused as an adverb.
Worse, though, it's just not good writing. It sets every editorial nerve in my body a-jangle. In what I think of as good writing, I look for elegance, simplicity, cleanness. "Seventeen years ago" is simple and clear.
And while we're at it: I'm also really bugged by the current use of "massive."
It will massively exceed your expectations.
I had been massively deceived.
It just sounds wrong or at least undignified but mostly just wrong. Is this, by any chance, millennial-speak? (In the way that Gen X uses prior.) I don't mean to criticize any younger generations! But I feel that good writing is good writing, and this isn't it.
I've been writing/copyediting for twenty-plus years, and in that time I've seen spelling and definitions and usage change—meaning changing officially in the dictionary. Most/all of my publishing-house clients use Merriam-Webster Collegiate (11th Edition) and I have seen the word fundraising (a noun) go from fund raising to fund-raising to fundraising. (Interestingly, the Unabridged still officially hyphenates it.)
My point here is, regarding "prior," it's not standard usage now, but this is how the nonstandard becomes accepted, how we end up with a third definition in Merriam-Webster, right? A few people use it, then other people notice it and think maybe it's OK, then eventually lots of people are using it, to the point that it gets the attention of someone in the dictionary's editing office. (See: The Language Metamorphosis.)
And I don't want that. So stop it.
* This is a report from the field, friends. I'm seeing it not in my own generation of writers, but in Gen X and beyond.
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