Where Did Prand Go?

English kept the fancy word and lost the meal.

Author’s experience eating beans and rice by AI

Language Secrets

I ran across the word "postprandial" and thought I had caught the English language hiding something.

"Postprandial" means after a meal. Fine.

So where is the prand?

I have eaten thousands of meals in my life. Breakfasts, lunches, suppers, dinners, snacks big enough to require witnesses. Not once has anybody called me to the table and said, “Sam, wash your hands. Your prand is getting cold.”

Apparently, English kept "prandial," meaning related to a meal, but never bothered to give us a plain old "prand."

Naturally.

The word comes from the Latin prandium, meaning “meal,” especially a midday meal. Somewhere along the road into English, the meal itself disappeared, but its necktie-wearing relative survived.

Doctors especially seem fond of it.

They do not say your blood sugar went up after you ate. They say you have elevated postprandial glucose.

I suppose that sounds better on the bill.

A fellow can eat two biscuits, sausage gravy, fried potatoes, and half a pie, then find himself described in language fit for the Roman Senate.

“Sir, we are concerned about your postprandial condition.”

No, you are concerned because I ate like the county fair was closing forever.

English is full of words like this, pieces of old languages still wandering around after the rest of the family disappeared. We keep the fancy derivative and lose the simple thing it came from.

Prand never had a chance.

Maybe we ought to bring it back.

“Have you pranded yet?”

“No, but I’m fixing to.”

“Come on over. We’ve got beans.”

I like it. Plain, useful, sturdy.

We have preprandial, postprandial, and prandial, all standing around looking educated.

Meanwhile, poor old prand is gone.

Somewhere along the way, English ate the meal and kept the vocabulary.

[embed]Ozymandias and the First Step What recovery taught me about the collapse of pridemedium.com

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Retired now, with more than four decades of experience as an addiction counselor walking alongside men and women in recovery, I like to write about faith, human dignity, aging, and the fact that every struggle hides a longing for meaning.

I am a member of the Baha’i Faith and believe that unity and compassion are essential to healing. I write about addiction to substances, recovery, and the thistles of the soul. Human rights are God-given rights.

If you’ve worked with addiction or lived through it, I’d be glad to hear what you’ve learned.