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Comment by bovermyer | Hacker News Reader

"Prepone" makes sense even if it's not a word.

Closest equivalent I can think of is "move up."

That's a funny example to use, since you can move up a date, but nobody talks about moving down a date. Same problem in the opposite direction.

"We're moving up the launch" is common, but never heard anyone say "we're moving down the launch", even though delays are common.

The issue with "prepone" is that "pone" isn't really used as a world. A quick googling shows that it is a word, but in regular speech it's not used as a standalone.

Rather than 'up and down', I think the visual is supposed to be 'up and back' (like forward and backward).

English is fun

More usually (in the UK) it's forward and back, which make more sense as direct opposites. It's a little confusing though because pushing something back means move it later and bring it forward means move it earlier, whereas when talking directly about time the meanings are usually reversed (e.g. "back in time" means earlier).

in this case i'd interpret "forward/backward" as "closer towards you / further away from you", with the metaphor being that you're standing on a timeline looking "in the future direction" and moving stuff closer/further.

when using "back" to talk about the past, it's "backwards" as in "behind you". "further back" = "further behind you" = "more in the past"

Does "back in time" mean earlier when speaking of future events? Or only past events?

A future meeting "moved back" is definitely postponed. (US English)

And yet when you "set something back" you move it later in time.

    you can move up a date, but nobody talks about 
    moving down a date.

It reminds me of this scene from Stargate SG1: https://youtu.be/LxK0ZIk_sSE

"Yesterday morning" and "tomorrow morning" is my favorite example. Several previous Indian coworkers of mine would say "today morning", which always made me smile a bit. It's not an unreasonable phrase to exist, given the others do as well.

In German the word for morning and tomorrow is the same, "Morgen".

But "tomorrow morning" becomes "Morgen früh" which is "tomorrow early" (or "early tomorrow" in English). "Morgen vormittags" ("tomorrow before noon") is also a variation.

That would be "Mañana en la mañana" in Spanish!

Pone not being an English word on its own is not really relevant.

A lot of, if not most, Greek/Latin neologisms and combined words use a root that is never used as is.

Both “neologism” and “combine” above are examples of this…

I have not heard about move up a date before but I understand it to move the date to another future date. I guess the point it doesn't matter if it is a word or not as long as it is easily understandable, typically within a region, a culture or an industry.

Pone may not be a word but pre and post should ideally be quite obvious and self sufficient qualifiers if standardized.

And then I remembered the word preposterous, enough said.

Moving up a date is like moving up toward the front in a line (or queue) vs moving back.

Right, but then why is isn't it "moving front" instead of moving up? Languages are weird.

> moving down a date

I'd consider "(later) down the road" an example of that.

If it makes sense and its meaning is widely understood by other English speakers, I think it is a word. We don't have some academy with the authority to say it isn't.

Not a synonym but a similar trick: "outro."

(From "intro" in case it's not obvious.)

I've read that people learning English have difficulty with phrasal verbs like "move up" [1], so I can understand why "prepone" might become popular.

[1]: http://esl.fis.edu/vocab/phrasal/phrasal-important.htm

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