Constitutional Law

I give up hopes for our language

Harvard, where you must talk as if your teeth were wired together, advertises for a law school job with: "Duties and Responsibilities: Works proactively and independently with minimal oversight to conduct research and analyze results, while also functioning as part of a research team or working group."

Harvardians: there is no such word as "proactive." The converse of reactive is active. If there were a converse to reactive, which there is not, it would be preactive, from the stem pre, or before in the sense of time, rather than pro, in the sense of in favor of.

Full post as published by Of Arms and the Law on April 02, 2008 (boomark / email).