pre and post - one word?

Question

Should words using pre and post, like "postpeak" be one word, two, or hyphenated?

Paco2004 · Accepted Answer

Hello Anon

Welcome to English Forums. I'm also an English learner and I am learning English here by asking and answering questions.

The "post-" you are asking about is a prefix derived from Latin, meaning "after" or "subsequent to". Some of the words preceded with the prefix "post-" themselves are of Latin origin. For example "postscript" comes from the Latin word "postscriptum". Such words should be written as a word without a hyphen. But most of the words in the form "post-X" were coined by putting "post-" to an existing word. The examples are "post-war", "post-climax", "post-wagon", etc. Those newly coined words were originally written in the form "post-X" with a hyphen in between "post" and "X". Some of them, however, as they are so commonly used, came to be written in the form "postX" (without a hyphen). The examples are "postnatal" and "postgraduate". There seems no rule about which word is with or without a hyphen. So you have to look in a good dictionary to know whether it should be written as "post-X" or as "postX".

"Post-peak" is a new word to me, but I believe it should be written as "post-peak" because they write "post-climax" as "post-climax" not as "postclimax".

paco

Panda olive 326 · Answer

pre

pre-publication or prepublication

pre and post - one word?

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