What it means
To prepone something is to move it earlier. It’s the tidy opposite of postpone, and in Indian English it’s completely normal in office chat, travel plans, school admin, the whole timetable circus. Meetings get preponed, flights get preponed, deadlines too. First time you hear it, your brain usually goes yep, that tracks.
Usage examples
"Boss wants to prepone the client call to 9 AM instead of 11. That means waking up at 7 on a Monday, which honestly should be against the Geneva Convention."
"My boss in the Bangalore office wanted to prepone the client call from Frankfurt to nine in the morning on Monday instead of the original eleven slot, that meant waking up at seven on a public holiday weekend, which honestly should be against the Geneva Convention article on basic human rights at the workplace."
"The wedding planner in Pune called the bride's mother on Wednesday afternoon to prepone the sangeet ceremony by two whole days because of the unexpected monsoon forecast, the family had to redo all the seating arrangements for two hundred guests in three hours, and the caterer from Mumbai charged an emergency surcharge for the lehenga procession."
"Can we prepone lunch to 12:30? By two o’clock this office turns into a hunger riot."
"They preponed the interview to tomorrow morning, so now I’m speed-ironing my shirt and pretending I’ve got my life together."
Where it comes from
Prepone is a coinage from Indian English, formed as the opposite of postpone. It’s been in recorded use since at least the 1970s and became common fast in business, government, education, and everyday scheduling talk across India. From there it moved into newspapers, formal writing, and major English dictionaries.
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