Pre-what?

There seems to be a wide use of the term ‘pre-warned’ in Australian English. This, I assume, means to warn someone BEFORE they are warned! With normal English usage someone is ‘warned’ that an event or situation may arise – this is perfectly understandable and to my way of thinking a ‘correct’ use of language. But to ‘pre-warn’ them? This makes no sense at all.

I am no Latin scholar but I do think that I have a reasonable grasp of the English language. Now as far as I know ‘pre’ is from Latin meaning ‘before’ or something that comes in ‘front’ of a word to give that word a different meaning and has come into the English language with the same meaning. Hence the words ‘prefix’ (ie. in front of a word), ‘pre-empt’, ‘precursor’, ‘pre-adult’ etc. So to place the prefix “pre’ before the word ‘warning’ is, I don’t know – an oxymoron maybe? It is certainly superfluous and unnecessary.

So why use it? I will refer to my dictionary to confirm all this.

I stand corrected after referring to my English Language bible!! I will always admit an error (see my halo?)

The Oxford English Dictionary (henceforth the OED) states under ‘pre’ that ‘pre-warn’ is a rare usage and means to give advance warning of an event. Of course there is the perfectly good term ‘forewarned’!!

But I still stand by my original comment that ‘pre-warn’ is not good English (hence the ‘rare’ comment by the OED). And I stand by my comment that a warning is a warning and that an advance warning or to be forewarned is still a warning – that however one is warned a warning is a warning. Also that pre- or advance- or fore- are all superfluous. A warning is sufficient. No?

What do you think?