“Prolegomenon” was borrowed straight from Latin in the early 1600s, about the time when authors in English got a serious grasp on the sequence “I’ll tell you want I’m gonna tell you, then I’lll tell you, then I’ll tell you what I just told you.” It’s either an introductory chapter, or in more ambitious undertakings, a whole book introducing a subject that’s going to be further explained in additional volumes. That latter approach resulted in page-turners like “A Prolegomenon to the Reconceptualisation of Dialectic.”
It’s also pretty clear that “prolegomena” (that’s the plural; it’s Latin, remember) have almost always been restricted to academic works. Not that “A Prolegomenon to the Political Expediencies Involved in the Undermining of the Galactic Republic by the Pursuit of a Conflict Enacted by and on the Behalf of the Practice of Genetic Duplication” wouldn’t have been just as popular as “Star Wars” — they probably didn’t use that title because it was too hard to make it into a good logo.
You might be thinking that we already use a form of “prolegomenon” — “prologue.” But actually “prologue” is a different word, borrowed from French several centuries before “prolegomenon” showed up. If you trace “prologue” further back, it’s also from Latin, but it comes from “prologus,” the spoken introduction to a play. It’s not only the word that’s shorter; in general anything called a “prologue,” even when it’s written down, doesn’t approach the average length of a “prolegomenon.” This is probably as it should be; if you’re going to invest in a word like “prolegomenon,” you really want to get your money’s worth.
