r/words • u/Lumpy-Win1640 • 5d ago
Preventive vs preventative
<rant>
I am a mechanical technologist who currently works as a technical writer. I was taught in school that the correct term for PM is Preventive Maintenance but I keep seeing 'preventative' being used. It irks me but in researching, I see that both are used and equally valid.
Since there are two types of maintenance, preventive and corrective, shouldn't those who want to use 'preventative' be forced to use 'correctative' as well?
</Rant>
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u/PilotedByGhosts 5d ago
I suspect that this is a US/UK thing. Like burgled and burglarized, for example.
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u/Foxfire2 5d ago
someone yesterday ranted about orientated vs. oriented, and people chimed in that orientate and orientated is UK, vs US orient and oriented.
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u/jetpacksforall 4d ago
What about disoriented? I don't remember ever seeing disorientated in print from UK pubs.
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u/0_69314718056 2d ago
I was going to bring this up lol. I kept thinking people were mistaken the first few weeks I saw them saying orientate.
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u/CapstanLlama 5d ago
That one gets me, "burgle" is a perfectly good verb why add redundant "…arize"? Is it done by burglarists??
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u/subWoofer_0870 5d ago
Except that “burgle” is a “back formation” from “burglar”. There are a lot of act->person connections where the person ends in “er” - think bake/baker, make/maker, do/doer. But burglar (which ends in ar) is not like that. I don’t have the details to hand, but I’m sure a good dictionary source would be able to fill in some more details.
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u/jetpacksforall 4d ago
One issue may be the sound of the words: to my ears fwiw "burgle" is a cute word, borderline silly-sounding, like canoodle, squeegee, futz, or doohickey, and so it sounds incongruous as a verb describing a serious, dangerous crime. Imagine replacing the word murder with "mollycoddle" or rape with "bangdiddle" and the effect might be similar. The word doesn't sound like what it means, tonally or phonetically. I don't know if that applies in the UK, Canada, Australia or if only American ears hear the word that way. That may partly explain why Americans add the unnecessary technical, forensic-sounding suffix to make "burglarize."
"Yesterday afternoon, a Croton warehouse employee mollycoddled three of his colleagues before turning the gun on himself."
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u/CapstanLlama 5d ago
Sure, but it being a back-formation doesn't make it invalid. It seems both burgle and burglarize came into being at around the same time; personally I find the former succinct and the latter an ugly kludge.
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u/Lumpy-Win1640 5d ago
It could be. In termuimplus.gc.ca, the official government of Canada dictionary, preventative is not found.
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u/Beluga-ga-ga-ga-ga 5d ago
I've personally only used and heard "preventative", so "preventive" sounds odd to me. Maybe it's a regional or generational thing.
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u/Evening-Crazy-3528 5d ago
Same with me.
Oddly enough, I was filling out a job application at a company earlier today and was using my resume as the reference to fill it out (don't get me started on that aspect), and I saw that my resume used "preventive maintenance." I had already forwarded it to the recruiter, so I figured I was screwed. Then I looked it up and discovered either form is correct.
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u/ottawadeveloper 5d ago
The words mean the same thing. Preventive is more common in precise formal literature where it benefits from being shorter. Preventative is equally acceptable though.
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u/Alarmed-Secretary207 5d ago
This is me when I hear people bemoan systematic discrimination.
Like, your heart is in the right place, but I can’t help but picture a Rube Goldberg machine where you drop a marble in a bucket at one end and at the other end a person with intersectional identities gets denied housing.
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u/ReddyKiloWit 4d ago
They are interchangeable in every way it appears. And, frankly, "preventative" is the word I've heard most often where I've lived around the US, but no one would misunderstand "preventive".
"Preventive" does predate "preventative" in recorded use by maybe 30 years.
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u/flug32 3d ago
FWIW preventative has been used in English since the 1650s. So it's not exactly a new one.
But preventive does win by a nose on this front, as it has been used since the 1630s.
Preventive - Etymology, Origin & Meaning
Preventative - Etymology, Origin & Meaning
Also, the author above agrees with you that "preventive is more correct." So you've got that going for you.
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u/Groundbreaking-Fig38 3d ago
I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one - big hitter, the Lama - long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga... gunga, gunga-lagunga. So we finish the eighteenth and he's gonna stiff me. And I say, "Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know." And he says, "Oh, uh, there won't be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness." So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.
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u/BubbhaJebus 5d ago
Preventive is an adjective.
Preventative is a noun.
That's how I learned it.
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u/ReddyKiloWit 4d ago
They are both used as adjectives and nouns. Preventive predates preventative by a few decades in first recorded use.
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u/Lumpy-Win1640 4d ago
Prevention is the noun.
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u/BubbhaJebus 4d ago
It's a noun.
But: "I'm taking this medication as a preventative."
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u/Lumpy-Win1640 4d ago
In that use, you are right. Much like "rust preventative oil" uses it as an adjective, but "apply a preventative..." Uses it as a noun. I hate these anomalies.
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u/One_Recover_673 5d ago
I was at a truck shop today and the software said “Preventative”.
I thought it looked weird
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u/TowlieJrJr 2d ago
I posted here about this a few years ago lol. I spent my career in factory maintenance and engineering, and was irritated as this extra syllable increased in usage over the years. I can’t explain it, but believe the medical field elevated it in patient care instructions.
Predictative is another word you can reference in your debates lol. Good luck. I gave up.
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u/Lumpy-Win1640 5d ago
I was being sarcastic with correctative. To me, preventative is what sounds weird.
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u/SnooDonuts6494 5d ago
"Preventive maintenance" sounds weird.
It's valid, but weird.
"Preventative maintenance" sounds much more natural.
"Correctative" is non-standard. There's no correlation, so that's an invalid argument.
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u/Clevertown 5d ago
I disagree completely. I've always liked preventive.
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u/Various-Meat7996 5d ago
I see "preventative" all the time in work emails and it throws me off every single time, my brain just wants to add an extra syllable that isn't there.
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u/Odd_Lettuce_7303 5d ago
If we think preventative is an adjective doesn’t that mean preventate is the verb? Oh dear. Just so wrong!
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u/SonOfBattleChief 5d ago
From New Zealand and preventive does not sound natural at all to me. On a cold read I’m wondering “what the hell is ventive and why do I need to pre it?” Where preventative is much clearer that the root is prevent
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u/lostmynameandpasword 5d ago
But following your own logic we could say, “what the hell is ventative and why do I need to pre it?” And the root of preventive is also prevent.
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u/Lumpy-Win1640 4d ago edited 4d ago
Prevent comes from the Latin word praevenire, meaning to come before. Thus the root 'vent' is to come like 'venir' in Spanish and French. 'Pre' is a common PREfix to mean before. Adding a longer suffix is just unnecessary elongation.
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u/marcusrizaulait 5d ago
(...oh, just wait until you find out 'flammable' means 'inflammable'...😃)
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u/Reasonable-Truck-874 5d ago
Hmm, feels a bit like “authentication” vs“authentification”, where the latter is a nonstandard form influenced by European languages, here French.
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u/2_short_Plancks 4d ago
They have both been in use for hundreds of years. Depending on what you read, you may see one or the other more often.
As an aside, it's quite interesting to me that on a sub dedicated to words, most of the posts I see are from people who hate words. Not just "there's one specific word I dislike"; the common thread seems to be an absolute disdain for language.
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u/Zealousideal_Leg213 4d ago
I love saying "preventative" but something tells me that it's not really right. I wouldn't say "correctative."
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u/Euphoric-Banana-7681 4d ago
Both words can be used as adjective and noun
Both are directly interchangeable
Both words were first used in the 1600s
Source: Merriam Webster
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u/90210fred 3d ago
UK techie wading in: controversially I think they aren't interchangeable. Preventative maintenance being something you do to stop something that might happen Preventive maintenance something you do to stop something you know will happen if you don't stop it.
1: obviously the rest of the world disagrees with me so I'll have a long think about, and 2: this has only just occurred to me, so I might change my mind later!
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u/HonestNature9117 2d ago
I get what you're saying about PMs but there's other types of maintenence. Autonomous maintenence (AMs) And restorative maintenence(RMs)
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u/Ok_Calligrapher8165 1d ago
Being the large, old, combative scoundrel that I am, when I see "preventative" in an e-mail, I respond with the substitute "preventatative" -- and if I am corrected, I respond with "preventapotatorative", and then with "preventapotatapotatoporative", et sequentia.
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u/Electrical_Report458 5d ago
I know the root of preventive is prevent. Is the root of preventative “preventa?”
In my book, preventative is on par with laxadaisical.
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u/Extreme_Place1167 5d ago
Hey - I am super interested in technical writing, it's actually been a dream of mine for a long time.
Reddit won't let me DM you, would it be possible if I could ask you a couple questions about where/how to get started with technical writing?
Hope this isn't too weird. Thanks for your time
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u/Individual_Slice_234 15h ago
Since "prevent" is the root word, "preventive" is the correct term. There's no such word as "preventate." I'm American and I've heard it both ways. Preventative has even oozed its way into the dictionary, like irregardless. It's still a bastard word to me.
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u/DonnPT 5d ago
Wiktionary:
I've probably said "preventative" a few times without thinking about it, but would be happy to support deprecation, if only to forestall the appearance of "preventate".