I'm no fan of Condoleeza Rice (to say the least) but she earned my admiration yesterday when she correctly used the expression status quo ante in the statement "I have no desire to help Israel and Lebanon return to the status quo ante."
"Return to the status quo" is a pet peeve of mine. Because status quo literally means "the state that is," to return to the status quo is a logical impossibility. I know I'm being pedantic. I know that in colloquial English status quo now means "business as usual; the typical state of affairs." And according to that meaning, it is possible to return to the status quo. It still annoys me. I try not to indulge my pedantic tendencies too much (for instance I don't care about misuse of "hopefully," I think that's a bogus rule and I do it myself), but when a word is used in a way opposite its meaning (see literally) it bugs the crap out of me.
Anyway, my hat's off to Ms. Rice for properly saying "return to the status quo ante," that is "the state that was before." The best part was when the radio news people were discussing her statement, they kept repeating "status quo ante" and defining it. It was like a lesson on proper usage on the evening news!
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Note to inner pedant: "Condoleezza" has two zeds. I was corrected on this once, and even looked it up just now to avoid making some other error on this decidedly unstandard name.
Arthur Hlavaty also pointed out that I mistranslated "status quo." Guess my career as a pedant was shortlived!
Condi IS pedantic... and incorrect in her latin phrase dropping. Status quo ante? prior? prior to what? When I googled it the only use was 'status quo ante bellum'. I found not a single use of status quo ante without the bellum...