Why is the word “before” vanishing from common use?

Question

Just in the last four years, I've noticed that the word prior is increasingly used in place of before. Prior has become customary enough that people commonly leave off 'to' in employing it: "Most of the guests appeared at 8:00, but I arrived prior."

I don't know why this disturbs me so, but it does. My question to the linguists, though, is why it's happening now (in North America, anyway.) Both are two syllable words, both convey the same message, more or less -what's driving this change?

Answer 1

I searched the Corpus of Contemporary American English and from what I can see the word "before" is used at least 17x as often as "prior", and if you limit the search to just 2011 it's used 26x as often as "prior". So I think your premise is flawed.

Answer 2

I'm inclined to suspect the recency illusion as suggested above.

Another possibility is the related frequency illusion. You heard a particularly egregious use of prior when before would have served even better. It irritated you, so it stuck in your mind. Then the next time somebody used prior it stood out for that reason. Suddenly it seems that everyone is constantly using prior. You can see how it goes hand in hand with the recency illusion.

That said, words and phrases do go through fashions and fads. It's perfectly possible that you are moving in circles where there's a current fad favouring prior, because some people have decided it sounds better, and are favouring it which in turn leads others too. This certainly happens in business writing in particular. If so, the good news is that it'll probably die down again.

Answer 3

I'm with you, Fortunate1. I observe a lot of "prior to" in speech wherever I would have used "before" (As in, "I stopped by the post office prior to going to the market.", where I would have said "I stopped by the post office before going to the market.").

And I, too am annoyed or disturbed by this (to my ears) growing tendency in the US. I, too, don't know why it disturbs me; perhaps I react as if it is unnecessarily hi-faluting.

My linguistics-related guess is that the difference between the two is stress. I believe that we're moving towards an increase in first-syllable stress in general, not merely in this word choice.