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Guest
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| Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 7:01 am
Post subject: Are pro and con words? |
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I heard "Pros&Cons" many times. I know that "pro" means that one agrees
and "con" means that one stands against the opinion, and "s" means they
are plural. But is "pro" or "con" a word? It sounds to me like they are
prefixes. Then, how come can they have plural "s"?
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Alan Jones
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 1:25 pm
Post subject: Re: Are pro and con words? |
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<jihyun0903@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1128403512.826724.205700@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
| Quote: | I heard "Pros&Cons" many times. I know that "pro" means that one agrees
and "con" means that one stands against the opinion, and "s" means they
are plural. But is "pro" or "con" a word? It sounds to me like they are
prefixes. Then, how come can they have plural "s"?
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They are in fact Latin prepositions (or sometimes adverbs), one of them
abbreviated: "pro" and "contra", meaning "for" and "against". Their use as
nouns is informal. I suppose it's easier to say "pros and cons" than "the
arguments for and against".
Native speakers quite often use words as other parts of speech: for
instance, the word "doctor" is properly a noun, but is used informally as a
verb ("doctoring the evidence" is falsifying it, perhaps by removing
incriminating material).
Alan Jones |
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Adrian Bailey
Guest
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| Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2005 7:56 pm
Post subject: Re: Are pro and con words? |
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<jihyun0903@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1128403512.826724.205700@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
| Quote: | I heard "Pros&Cons" many times. I know that "pro" means that one agrees
and "con" means that one stands against the opinion, and "s" means they
are plural. But is "pro" or "con" a word?
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Yes.
| Quote: | It sounds to me like they are prefixes.
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Yes.
| Quote: | Then, how come can they have plural "s"?
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Because they are prefixes and they are nouns (etc.):
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=pro
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=con
Adrian
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