Now The, I'm an admirer of your general erudition, but, on this occasion, I have no hesitation in declaring that you are talking utter bollocks (you've done it before on several occasions, as it happens, but I haven't said anything). "Pre-order" is a senseless, useless, redundant and pretentious modernism. There is a bottom line here (to use another such), thus: if I go into Morrisons in April to order a Christmas turkey, everyone there knows what my intention is but I will, of course, be dismissed out of hand for being stupid. Rightly so, but no-one will accuse me of attempting to "pre-order". If I go into Morrisons in early December to bag me Kelly Bronze, stating that I wish to order my turkey, no-one but no-one will say to me "But ahah Mr Shaw! What you really want to do is to pre-order your turkey!" Everyone knows what I mean, come rain or shine, come winter, summer or pre-Thanksgiving, when I say "I wish to order a turkey." We have spoken thus for many centuries, and the "pre-" is a modern piece of superfluous and pretentious nonsense. As for the correspondent above who would make the nice distinction between pre-ordering and ordering on the basis of whether one pays upfront or not, well, dear boy, pick the bones out of this one: the form said I was pre-ordering the bloody thing, yet I had to pay a deposit amounting to half the price of the still-gobbling beast. I await your analysis with delicious anticipation.