PRE-EXISTING GRIPE

My candidate for most annoying word in everyday use: “pre-existing,” as in a “pre-existing order” to sell shares of a stock or the notorious “pre-existing conditions” for which insurance companies reject customers.

The problem is not really that a condition existed before something else, it’s that the condition exists at all, which means timing is just an excuse. So complaining that the “patient has a pre-existing condition” is, stripped down, complaining that the “patient has an existing condition,” and that, stripped down again, is complaining that the “patient has a condition.” Martha Stewart’s “pre-existing order” to sell ImClone Systems Inc. shares at a certain time is just an “order.” (Although it can be modified to “standing order.”)

Use of “pre-existing” makes sense only in the religious context for which it was created, if that, which probably explains why every time I see the phrase used, my eyes roll toward heaven and I exclaim, “Jesus Christ.”