I do quite a bit of LinkedIning, and a suffix I often see is preneur. I’m sure you know the thing I mean, teacherpreneur, mediapreneur, momtrepreneur, socialpreneur, etc. etc. etc. I have to say they kind of bugs me. It’s like sticking the word gate after something to turn it into a scandal. The gate suffix derived from the late U.S. President Nixon’s fall from grace surrounding the burgling of the Watergate building, and discovery of Nixon having approved plans to cover it up, which quickly became known simply as Watergate. I remember way back when I worked in journalism, the term Dianagate was used to describe the late Princess Diana’s scandalous extra marital affair. I digress.

Anyway, I thought I’d look into the term, entrepreneur and see what it actually means. When I Googled “preneur meaning” I got a French expression, “Personne, chose qui prend”. I – and I’m sure many of you who don;t speak French – wonder exactly what that means, and so on our collective behalf I posted the whole term into to Google’s little sister, Ms Translate, who told me the English equivalent is, “Nobody. Thing that takes”. Hmmm, I thought. That sounds odd, so I tried “entre”, which returned a meaning “between”, and “preneur”, which means “taker”. Therefore, I would suggest we come up with some new terms for the cliched forms that are so often used. After all, who wants to be know as a “between taker” or a”teacher taker’? Or, for that matter, a “want taker” (yes, there really is such a thing as a wantrepreneur)?  

Another thing (I’ll always be the English teacher) that bugs the life out of me is the prefix of “pre” that has erroneously edged its way into adverts. Pre book! Pre order! Pre register! I even saw “pre reserve” recently, for God’s sake! What does order mean? What is a booking? What is registering or reserving? Why on earth would anyone stick a pre on any of them? It irritates me so much that find myself blocking people who use the terms. I find that I cannot order from a site that asks me to pre order – even if I want the product! Is this what happens when you get older? Maybe.

Even though the whole world might use a term that is wrong, it will never make it right.