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ImageSMART TALK
by Dr. Saber S. Poder


COCONSPIRATOR:  Those of us on the staff of the Institute for the Linguistically Impaired who took Latin once upon a time feel very superior, linguistically speaking.  But we try to treat the poorly educated majority with courtesy and respect.

We see in a flash that co-, con-, and com- are all prefixes that mean something like with, or together.  And without looking it up, we can see that to conspire means literally to breathe together, or to with someone else.  To coconspire means to scheme together with someone else.  Why do we need together in there?  Do we actually think we could do something with someone else separately?

Whenever a scandal breaks in Washington, we rediscover that our government does indeed hire the handicapped.  The guilty are morally handicapped, while the reporters and lawyers are linguistically handicapped, or sometimes both.  We must listen to coconspirator endlessly, even though conspirators are those who plot together.

Coconspirator is just as silly as pre-prepared.

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