Here’s something you will not hear at an airport departure gate: “We are now beginning preboarding for first-class passengers. All first-class passengers sit down and stay where you are.”
By grammatical logic, every one of us in the gate waiting area is in first class, as we’ve been in a state of preboarding for that particular flight since the moment of our birth. This now-common term really means “pre-general-boarding,” because once boarding begins for anyone, first class or not, you can throw the pro- in the trash can near the white courtesy phone. You can’t take pre- on board. FAA rules.
Well, obviously it’s my turn to be one of the persnickitors that I gripe about through this book. If I were being a proper descrip- tivist, the kind who defends kudo as a singular, I’d be sitting back in the not-so-comfy gate area and admiring delightful logic-mangling in the spirit of useful word creation. Instead, I stand up and say, “My name is Bill, and I’m a persnickitor.” Sometimes, anyway. Like these times: