| 词组 | precondition |
| 释义 | precondition "A modish but tautologous Lit Crit synonym for condition" is the evaluation of precondition pronounced by Howard 1980. Bryson 1984 brings forth an example in which the pre- adds nothing: "three preconditions to be met before negotiations can begin." But it is (or should be) difficult to evaluate a usage on the basis of one example. On this side of the Atlantic, Safire 1986 worries about the word's redundancy. Precondition had a literary beginning; it was introduced by Coleridge in 1825, and it was used by DeQuincey. But during the last forty years or so, it has been most frequently used in writing in social and political science and reporting on affairs of state, although it is by no means limited to such contexts. And it has a generous record of use, indicating that writers have found it a useful word. If precondition were simply a tautologous synonym for condition, we should be able to use condition in its place wherever it occurs. But we cannot. For instance, we find precondition used with the preposition to: • ... a desire to obtain a favorable settlement of her dispute with Germany over the Saar Basin as a precondition to ratification of the EDC treaty —Omar N. Bradley, Saturday Evening Post, 10 Apr. 1951 • ... what the Thais regarded as unacceptable preconditions to the conference —Denis Warner, The Reporter, 26 Mar. 1964 • ... a necessary precondition to making the full emancipation of women a reality —Gerda Lerner, Columbia Forum, Fall 1970 Since we cannot put condition very comfortably into any of these examples, we must conclude that condition and precondition are not quite the same here. We also find precondition with of; condition can also be used with of, so we should be able to substitute it without difficulty. See how many of these examples are unchanged by such substitution: • Weakness invites aggression. Now and in the future, strength is the precondition of peace —Dean Ache-son, quoted in The Pattern of Responsibility, ed. McGeorge Bundy, 1951 • The implication in such a pronouncement, emanating from the seat of government, is that religious faith is a condition, or even a precondition, of the democratic life —E. B. White, New Yorker, 18 Feb. 1956 • ... the biological preconditions of human speech — Philip Morrison, Scientific American, February 1978 • ... the classicizing sculptures ... which were a precondition of the development of a classicizing style in painting —Times Literary Supp., 22 Oct. 1971 Finally we have precondition with for. Again, condition would seem to be usable in the same constructions. Test them. • ... the precondition for woman's emancipation is the reform not of social institutions, but of... — Dwight Macdonald, The Reporter, 14 Apr. 1953 • ... the precondition for existence at Daytop is truthfulness —Renata Adler, New Yorker, 15 Apr. 1967 • Let us then assume that crises are a necessary precondition for the emergence of novel theories — Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2d ed., 1973 • To insist on absolute answers as a precondition for any great undertaking is to deprive the future of its main source of intellectual energy —Norman Cousins, Saturday Rev., 1 Aug. 1976 We think you will have found by now that condition does not satisfactorily replace precondition in many (if any) of the examples. The reason is simple: the pre- is not simply otiose. It focuses the mind of the reader [condition in Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary has 14 different senses) and emphasizes the notion of "before." If you are going to spell out the notion of "before" contextually, as the writer quoted by Bryson did, you certainly do not need precondition. But the authors quoted here let the pre- take care of that part of the message (and so did the rest of the authors in our file). From our evidence we judge that precondition is not usually used redundantly. |
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