I agree with John and Brian. To predate as in prey would always be used as one word, whereas I would certainly hyphenate pre-date, as in dating from before. I suspect either would be correct, but hyphens are wonderful things for clearing up potential confusion such as this. A similar example would be a football story that may state “Dane Swan resigns”. Now that would be dreadful if you were a Collingwood supporter such as myself, but add a hyphen after the re and all that angst is avoided 
26/08/2011 5:19 PM, brian fleming wrote: > On 26/08/2011 3:02 PM, John Leonard wrote: >> predate = dating from before >> predate = preying upon >> >> Aren’t the same word, they are separate words that happen to be spelt >> the same. They are clearly distinguished by the stress >> >> pre’date vs >> ‘predate >> >> John Leonard > > I would use a hyphen. > > I wonder if “Language Log” will pick up this discussion. > > Brian Fleming > =============================== > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, > send the message: > unsubscribe > (in the body of the message, with no Subject line) > to: birding-aus-request@vicnet.net.au > > http://birding-aus.org > ===============================
