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| *Ostroff, Fair and Company>>>Other - Advertising & Marketing |
If something is 'pre-owned' does that mean it was owned or it awaits ownership? |
If something is 'pre-owned' does that mean it was owned or it awaits ownership? You are absolutely right to question this! The prefix 'pre-' normally means 'before', in the sense of 'coming before' or 'going before, as in 'prefix', 'preface', 'prehistoric', 'pretax profit'. It is singularly uneducated to use it in 'pre-owned' to mean 'owned before'. I put its use in this sense to be indicative of the kind of market mentality which puts an apostrophe before every 's' that comes at the end of a word, likes to refer to a pokey house as 'bijou' and thinks that $9.99 looks better than $10! Pre-owned *should* be used to refer to such things, perhaps, as the moon before men landed on it or the North Pole before the Russians planted a flag hundreds of metres down on the seabed (even though ownership in these cases is disputed)! However, certain 'clever' people, in search of a word that means the same as 'second-hand' but sounds less tatty, have decided that, because a word is unfamiliar, it doesn't have the connotations that 'used', 'second-hand', 'refurbished' or 'nearly new' do. In the strictest sense of the word (as incorrectly used), ALL cars are 'pre-owned'. When you buy a new car, even, the ownership is transferred to you from the manufacturer or dealer! 'Pre-owned' is a rubbish term which will soon become OVERused and will lose its newness! If something is pre-owned, that's a fancy way of saying it's USED. In other words, somebody owned it before you did. i.e. you can buy a USED car, or a PRE-OWNED BMW (same thing, just one sounds more expensive). I hope that helps. it means it is used. Fancy term for USED. It was already owned. this is a joke right? Pre-owned means just that. Someone owned it before. It's the new buzz-word for used. you have GOT to be F@ckin Sh!ttin me. |
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