October 14, 1998

prequel

With the new "Star Wars" trilogy coming out soon, I've read the word "prequel" quite a bit. I also remember there being a prequel to Asimov's "Foundation" series. I can't find prequel in my dictionary. How old is it? If it's fairly new, do you know what the first prequel was?

The word prequel is one that is so useful that if it didn't exist, someone would have to invent it. (Curiously, in its first decade of existence several people did claim to have coined the word independently, which is the sort of thing that makes it hard to be an etymologist.)

Prequel means, as most people know by now, 'a sequel to a film, play, or piece of fiction whose events precede those portrayed in the original work'. The new Star Wars trilogy is a good current example of a prequel. In 1984, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the sequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark, was thus described. The word got a lot of attention in the late 1970s as plans for a sequel to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were being discussed--it was thought difficult to have a sequel to a film in which the two main characters are slaughtered in a hail of gunfire in the last scene. In 1977 the Silmarillion was viewed as a prequel to Lord of the Rings (with coinage of the word attributed to J.R.R. Tolkien).

However, I do not know what was the subject of the first use of the word prequel. It appears in 1972 without being attached to a particular film or book. Though the word might be new, the concept is not; Shakespeare's Henry VI trilogy was written and performed earlier than the Henry IV pair, for example.

Oh, and the word prequel has been in the Random House Webster's College Dictionary for many years.