Learn English – an appointment with friends called

phrase-requestssingle-word-requests

Suppose that my wife and I talk to another couple and set a time to go to the beach with them and spend some with that couple over there. What is this arrangement and its time called? Can it be called an appointment? For example how would you say that the other couple want to postpone this arrangement and the set time?

They called and want to postpone the appointment / rendezvous/ catch-up / arrangement / meeting.
They cancelled the appointment / rendezvous / … .

I know that most of these option are fine. But I don't know which ones are actually used by native speakers and will appreciate some usage examples in the case of time and place arrangements with friends.

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Get-together

Meetup

This would be used in Australia I can say. These words:

appointment/ rendezvous/ / arrangement / meeting

Are probably too formal to talk about a regular, but casual get together with friends.

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Learn English – In a project, what is the relationship between dependent tasks called

Prerequisite - Co-requisite - Post-requisite -- Where task A is the prerequisite and task B can either be a co-requisite or post-requisite.

As a project manager I have often used predecessor/successor, but usually where there is a chronological order.

Project tasks are related in exactly the same way that some educational courses are. This does imply providing some sort of utility, but not necessarily and the relationship is well understood.

With this in mind, one of my college chem classes was a prerequisite and an associated chem lab was a co-requisite.

Learn English – the word when people come up with the same idea independently

As @Dan Bron points out in his comment, multiple discovery fits the bill perfectly.

Other terms that are sometimes used are simultaneous invention or independent invention. Frequency of occurrence in Google Search are:

    Multiple discovery:     26,600    
    Simultaneous invention: 12,100    
    Independent invention:  69,900

In Google books:

    Multiple discovery:      4,780
    Simultaneous invention:  4,460
    Independent invention:  33,500

See this Ngram. The figures for independent invention are possibly skewed because this term is used in patent law.

If you're looking for a better, more cool name, synchronicity might work:

the coincidental occurrence of events and especially psychic events (as similar thoughts in widely separated persons or a mental image of an unexpected event before it happens) that seem related but are not explained by conventional mechanisms of causality —used especially in the psychology of C. G. Jung

For added coolness (depending on your age :-)) it's also the title of a 1983 album by The Police.

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Learn English – In a project, what is the relationship between dependent tasks called

Learn English – the word when people come up with the same idea independently

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