I was reading a post about Metal Gear Solid 4 (the exact topic not relevant to conversation, but in short it was about the difficulty of porting it) and Metal Gear Solid 5 was mentioned in the comments as a Sequel, to which some people went off that it's not a Sequel, it's a prequel. Sigh. Language creep.
Prequel is a "modern" (around late 50s supposedly) word that means "pre-sequel" and is a sub-set of sequel. Sequel simply means something that follows (it's Latin derived around 500 years ago) and wasn't meant as a movie or even a book term, but apparently soon caught on and became the primary meaning, even in most dictionaries. I'm cool with this as this doesn't change the meaning of the word and it can still be used without confusion... but seeing "prequel" as "post-quel" seems a bit limiting to me. For one, some books are partially retrospective and this will then create arguments about is it a prequel or a sequel, rather than a sequel which is partially a prequel. Time will tell if this new definition takes root, as in time, regardless of how I feel, this will become the actual meaning. 'cos that's how language works.
It's funny stuff really. Staying with movies, "movies" is about "moving pictures" and is kinda a silly term. "Footage" likewise relates to the length of film used measured using imperial units, and has no real relevance to most people these days, more so even in professional work, but I think it'll last for a long time. I find myself using it even though I feel it's past relevance, as it's clear to what it refers to and in most cases is not ambiguous.
But. Not really liking the growing use of "drop" where "release" used to be used. To be honest, "release" isn't a good term, but for the most part it's not ambiguous, when drop is. I've read stories saying stuff like "Gaming company drops demo for xxxxx", and my first thought is that it's cancelled, not "released". Supposedly this term started in the late 80s for hip-hop artists, then it slowly took over... 'cos... well... that part I don't, but I'm assuming it was 'cos people thought it was cool to use a hip-hop term and then it snowballed from there. At this point it looks like it's time I updated my internal meaning, and I might even need to start using "drop" instead of "release", and use "cancelled" instead of "dropped" for the other usage. This is why I find this one annoying. It's changing the meaning of a word and will make reading old news stories as you'll need to read in for context and/or check the date. There's a feature hidden in this annoyingness I suppose in that it's kinda dating things...
Not sure where I'm going in this rant. I suppose one interesting point to make is that it's not as big a deal as it used to be as trends like this are going to be global for the most part. There will always be specialised terms in groups like defence though.... and the perceived politeness of terms will vary from country and group. But now I've winding up rather than winding down so I'll stop here.
