Procrastination
Sitting around in the student lounge today, it occurred to me that the word "procrastinate," at first blush, seems to have an inherent contradiction: its first part, "pro," is generally used with words that have positive, work-related connotations. "Pro-duce." "Pro-tect." "Pro-create." "Pro-liferate." What was it doing in a word that meant doing the least possible?
I spent the next ten minutes discussing it with the random assortment of people around me, who were, as I’d anticipated, no help at all. I then opened up trusty ol’ Wikipedia (all lies, of course, but convincing lies nonetheless), and discovered the following:
"The word itself comes from the Latin word procrastinatus: pro- (forward) and crastinus (of tomorrow)."
AMAZING! "Procrastination" literally means "to put off until tomorrow."
Latin is great.
Procrastination is great.
