A Rant, My First But Surely Not My Last

I went to see "Date Night" last night (ironically, The Hubs stayed home with the kids and I did a Girls Night). It was tons of fun! The Hubs and I were debriefing about the other movies advertised at the beginning of the film, and were back to our long-standing debate: is it a preview or a trailer?

I am a Word Meister and this drives me CRAZY!! Common sense rules just looking at these two words. Pre- means before. You can break down the word and see that it means "before seeing." And everybody knows what a trailer is in other contexts - that big honking thing hooked to the back of the truck that completely obstructs your view of the road. It comes AFTER the truck, thereby trailing it. A movie trailer is trailing nothing, except, I'll grant you, extremely annoying paper bag puppets advertising a website that rips you off and saves a whole three minutes in the ticket line. But I digress. I'm watching these movie commercials BEFORE the movie. One might say that I'm watching (prepare yourself for coherency) a preview.

And this reasoning also holds weight when we notice that the preview/trailer is shown before the movie itself is released. For example, I don't want to see the trailer for "Titanic" because the movie has been out for 13 years; however, I'm salivating for an "HP: Deathly Hallows" preview - a movie that has yet to come out. (Yes, I heart Harry. No, I don't wear my Snuggie as an invisibility cloak in the privacy of my own home.)

On Wikipedia, it says "the term 'trailer' comes from their having originally been shown at the end of a feature film screening. That practice did not last long, because patrons tended to leave the theater after the films ended, but the name has stuck. Trailers are now shown before the film begins." At least that makes sense but when was this? "Originally?" Isn't that about 1920? What do they mean that the name "trailer" stuck? For whom? I swear I never heard the term "trailer" until I entered college. Everyone only ever called them "previews." And I grew up in LA. It's not like I was in Nowheresville raising catfish in the kiddie pool on my front lawn, talking about the latest preview.

So I want to hear from you. All you people who have been raised to call them "trailers" your whole life speak up! Am I alone on Preview Island?