prebuttal
prebuttal – sostantivo
prebut – verbo
Prior to the release of this report, Hayden issued a prebuttal to the report’s release when he appeared on CBS on Sunday.
It’s one of these prebuttals that some PR expert decided was an effective way to pre-spin the media.
To prebut is to dampen enthusiasm, to deaden scandal, to infect the opponent’s words with doubt before they’re uttered.
Il verbo to rebut (confutare) e il sostantivo da esso derivato, rebuttal (confutazione), sono usati comunemente sia nell’inglese quotidiano che nel linguaggio legale. Ma se sapeste che qualcuno sta per muovervi un’accusa o sta per rivelare qualcosa di negativo su di voi e voleste giocare d’anticipo potreste ricorrere al prebuttal. Il termine proviene dall’ambito politico, in cui le ‘confutazioni preventive’ sono considerate un vantaggio, dal momento che danno al prebutter la possibilità di smorzare l’effetto dell’accusa o della rivelazione a venire presentando i fatti nel modo più favorevole possibile a se stesso.
Origini del termine
Prebuttal è formato dal prefisso pre-, o probabilmente dall’aggettivo ‘pre-emptive’, e dal sostantivo rebuttal. Le prime occorrenze risalgono agli anni 1980 ma il concetto è di gran lunga anteriore, dato che è una forma della figura retorica detta prolessi. Il verbo è di conio più recente e non si è ancora diffuso.
Traduzione di Loredana Riu
prebuttal – noun
prebut – verb
Prior to the release of this report, Hayden issued a prebuttal to the report’s release when he appeared on CBS on Sunday.
It’s one of these prebuttals that some PR expert decided was an effective way to pre-spin the media.
To prebut is to dampen enthusiasm, to deaden scandal, to infect the opponent’s words with doubt before they’re uttered.
To rebut something is to respond to it by saying or showing that it isn’t true and a rebuttal is an instance of this; the terms are used both in general and legal English. But what if you knew in advance that someone was going to make an accusation or assertion about you that you wanted to rebut? Well, then you could get your retaliation in first by making a prebuttal. The term comes, of course, from politics, where prebuttals are regarded as advantageous, since they draw the sting of the attack by anticipating and expressing it in a way that is as favourable as possible to the prebutter.
Origin
Prebuttal is formed by combining the prefix pre-, or possibly the adjective ‘pre-emptive’, and the noun rebuttal. It was first recorded in the 1980s, but the concept has been around for much longer than that, being a form of what is known in rhetoric as prolepsis. The verb is more recent and has not really caught on yet.
