A joke (sorta lame but, whatever) that has been going around on the internet since ages (if pro is the opposite of con, what’s the opposite of progress?) was finally picked up and printed on the front page of Mumbai Mirror, in light of today’s civic body elections, thus ensuring that the handful of people who hadn’t heard it earlier are now aware of it. The grammatical mistake (IT shouldn’t have been there) and the bad spacing (you need a space after the comma) notwithstanding, a lot of people would find it decently funny, so I thought I would take this opportunity to write a bit about this pun, so to speak, from a linguistic angle, because, well, that’s what Linguistrix is all about.
Note that this post is NOT a rant, and I am NOT saying that whoever originally came up with this joke should have thought of what I will discuss now, or should have researched it out. No. I am just saying that, now that we have had our share of laughs over this joke (if at all), let’s spend a couple of minutes looking at how it stands linguistically. Morphologically and etymologically, to be more precise.
Let’s start with the EtymOnline gloss for the two words in question. First, progress.
progress (n.) 
early 15c., "a going on, action of walking forward," from O.Fr. progres, from L. progressus (see progression). Figurative sense of "growth, development, advancement to higher stages" is from c.1600. The verb is attested from c.1590 in the lit. sense, c.1600 in the fig. sense.
And let’s have a look at the supposed opposite, converting the pro to con
congress c.1400, "body of attendants; also "meeting of armed forces" (mid-15c.); main modern sense of "coming together of people, a meeting" is from 1520s; from L. congressus "a friendly meeting; a hostile encounter," pp. of congredi "meet with, fight with," from com- "together" (see com-) + gradi "to walk," from gradus "a step" (see grade).
When we look at the entry for progression, we get closer to our goal:
progression mid-15c., "action of moving forward," from O.Fr. progression (early 15c.), from L. progressionem (nom. progressio) "a going forward," from progressus, pp. of progredi "go forward," from pro- "forward" (see pro-) + gradi "to step, walk," from gradus "step" (see grade).
It turns out that the _pro_ in progress is indeed the pro that means _forward/in favour of _and which is routinely used in the phrase pros and cons. The _gress_ comes from the root gradi, which we can also find in words such as ingress, egress and regress (the first two are frequently used in phonetics when describing speech sounds—pulmonary egressive sounds are those that are produced by air-stream originating from the lungs and moving out)
If the _pro_ in progress sounds legit, and con is indeed the opposite of pro, does this lead us to the natural conclusion that the joke is indeed linguistically sound? It would, except for one snag. The _con_ in the word _congress_ is a different morpheme, which, though similar in form to the _con_ meaning _against_ (and which is short for contra), has a completely different identity and meaning. This con, which is allomorphic to _com,_ means together, is what you see in words like companion (com+pan~[eats] bread together) and _convenient_ (con+venire=comes together/comes along) and which is also present in the word congress, meaning walking together. The word congress has loads of uses, and while the being together meaning of the word might not be very apparent in the sense of a political party, it’s very clear in its other uses. If you’ve read the English translation of Kama Sutra, you’ll have noticed that the word _congress_ has been used umpteen times in place of what would nowadays be called sexual intercourse, or just plain sex.
What we have then is a case of having two morphemes identical in spelling but with completely different functions. This is nothing uncommon, actually—the morpheme _s_ in English serves three roles—it’s the third person singular morpheme for verbs (he plays), it’s the plural morpheme (these plays) and it’s also the morpheme that makes possessive forms from the respective nouns (this play’s name).
So well, there we go. A joke that would have cleared the linguistic firewall if not for two morphemes hiding under the same orthographic representation.
The same explanation applies to the joke that’s been going around along with this one (and that was apparently published as a reply)—_if pro is the opposite of con, what’s the opposite of constitution?_ In fact, instead of acting as a rebuttal to the original joke/accusation, it actually supports it, by showing the constitution (generally considered a good thing) as the opposite of prostitution (generally considered a bad thing). It does show the ridiculousness of applying backyard morphology as and when you see fit. There’s no explanation as to why the hell one would examine the purported opposite of the word constitution. The aim here is not to convert all _pros_ to _cons_ or the other way round, but to take a jab at a party whose name appears (superficially) to be the opposite of the word progress. None of this is affecting people though, who seem to see an illogical reply to a misleading and grammatically incorrect jab as LEGIT.
You are Linguistrix readers. You consider both manifestos and morphology while deciding who to vote for. You are part of the 1%, but that’s not a bad thing in this case. Vote wisely.