Don't you hate it when you prepare yourself to mercilessly mock a word that appears to have been made up for purely obfuscating metareasons, only to discover that it is an actual word and has not, in fact, been used erroneously? Nothing deflates quite like a pumped-up pedant denied her prey.
There I was, sharpening my pen in preparation for shredding the advertisement for a training course at a certain fancy new art museum that allows assistant curators to "work alongside the museum's preparators".
Preparators?
I am still struggling with the bacterial spread of curators. I cannot help but flinch when cushions, words and broccoli florets are "curated" instead of simply being chosen. In this case, however, I had no objection to curation.
But preparators?
Prepare to meet thy doom, preparators, I thought, assembling an army of innovators, propagators, complicators and detonators.Fortunately, I first did a quick search for preparator, not expecting to find it in any respectable place.
Imagine my shock when, somewhere between "prehistoric" and "pretentious", there it was, in defiant boldface, in the Oxford English Dictionary.
John the Baptist, says this oracle, was the first preparator. Modern ones mostly handle art, although science-museum preparators might still work with locusts.
My spellcheck does not recognise preparator (it changes it to preparatory) and I'm not convinced anyone else should either. What, I ask you, is wrong with a plain old preparer?
• E-mail your observations on words and language to Sue de Groot on degroots@sundaytimes.co.za or follow her on Twitter @deGrootS1..