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How do I say “Our meeting is preponed”?

A friend of mine asked me this question, and it caught my curiosity.

Is there an explicit opposite of the word postpone? As in, do something in advance? Clearly what I just said is functionally equivalent to the answer I am seeking, but I was wondering if there was a single word that is the antonym.

More context: Bob was supposed to start work in July, but due to a work visa issue, he had to begin in advance.

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The most business-speaky option is expedite. Other alternatives include accelerate, hasten, and advance.

Technically prepone is in fact the precise antonym, but I honestly wouldn't be caught dead using it.

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  • Agreed. If only we could use expedite when we were setting an earlier date for a meeting and the like; it may be the closest thing we have.
    – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Mar 1, 2011 at 21:53
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I think the best antonym is "bring forward".

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    OP is looking for a single word...
    – Aaron McIver
    Commented Mar 1, 2011 at 21:28
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    My fault!:S Nevertheless, I think it is the best antonym.
    – LPC
    Commented Mar 1, 2011 at 21:35
  • The OP is asking for "an explicit opposite", and tagged the question with antonyms. The only antonym for postpone reported in the thesaurus is bring forward.
    – avpaderno
    Commented Mar 1, 2011 at 21:35
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    I apparently thing of forward and back differently than you. "Postpone" seem to more relate to "bring forward" (i.e. forward more to the future) and whatever the opposite seems to relate more to "bring back".
    – Peter Olson
    Commented Mar 1, 2011 at 21:57
  • I agree with Peter. How is moving forwards in time going into the past? We cannot be complacent with this illogicality simply because others use it.
    – ahorn
    Commented May 25, 2017 at 18:06
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Although "prepone" is the obvious counterpoint to postpone, it smacks of neologism (in American English, at least). I would argue that "do in advance" also doesn't cover it, since it doesn't have a sense of "move the schedule forward", only "complete prior to the scheduled time".

In fact, "move the schedule forward" is the best way I can think of to say it, or "reschedule at an earlier date" to be even more wordy.

(Given human nature, I'm not at all surprised that a word so common as "postpone" has no clear antonym; but perhaps we'll get around to making one eventually.)

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    Haha, right. Perhaps we could make "antecrastinate" or "rehodiate"... or we could just grin and bear our nature.
    – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Mar 1, 2011 at 21:49
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Prepone

Which appears to be Indian based...

UPDATE:

Found this on Urban Dictionary with regard to prepone.

Has been in use in urban English spoken in India since at least the 1950s

Also noticed that the SE spell checker does not know what to do with prepone other then mark it misspelled.

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    I don't think this word is used much by native speakers elsewhere...
    – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Mar 1, 2011 at 21:33
  • @Cerberus Agreed; the OP appeared to be looking for a Jeopardy style answer
    – Aaron McIver
    Commented Mar 1, 2011 at 21:36
  • Your answer is still valuable for encyclopaedic comparison!
    – Cerberus - Reinstate Monica
    Commented Mar 1, 2011 at 21:50
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    I would have thought The Urban Dictionary would spell it prepwn.
    – Robusto
    Commented Mar 1, 2011 at 22:06
  • Prepone will not work with the OP's example sentence.
    – Marthaª
    Commented Mar 2, 2011 at 0:16

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