you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 33 points 3 months ago (25 children)

Ahh, I've been speaking english for over a decade, and I still sometimes get caught up with these and say the opposite thing of what I want

Like the whole thing of flammable and inflammable meaning the same thing.. just why?

  • source
  • hideshow 25 child comments
  • [–] 10 points 3 months ago (9 children)

    Cuz the prefix "in-" can mean both "not" (as in invalid) and "to cause to be" (as in indebted)

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 9 child comments
  • [–] 13 points 3 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Romantic words were incorporated differently into other languages as the Roman Empire's influence spread. Words like inflammable have more direct Latin roots than words like indebt. So where Inflammable comes directy from the latin inflammo, indebt came from old French and middle English, going from something like endetter and endetten, using the root word dete and dette, but stemming from the root Latin word, debitum. Then en became in at some point.

    That's how I understood it anyway through a very short amount of google searching. Anyone feel free to correct me.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Because modern English is a combination of ancient Celtic languages with the various languages of the British Isles's numerous populators and conquering forces across history, including but not limited to: Latin, German, Norse, and French. And spelling wasn't really standardized until the printing press was invented, due in part to class stratification. But that's another story lol. Suffice it to say, it's more than a bit of a hodgepodge and you just gotta take it for what it is.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (1 child)

    What words come from Celtic languages? I thought it was all Germanic with Latin and French words being borrowed later.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago

    You won't be too surprised by some of them actually: bog, bourbon, druid, shamrock, corgi, whiskey, crumpet. Others you'll find here have more circuitous routes where maybe just one phoneme stems from old Gaelic or something, into Latin, into Germanic or Old French, then into Old English, like "ambassador." I'm guessing most of the really Celtic words are used in the British Isles more than elsewhere in the English-speaking world.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 14 points 3 months ago (5 children)

    "flammable" actually has an interesting story:

    Since 1980s use of the word, especially in safety warnings, has been sometimes discouraged lest it be misunderstood as "non-flammable" through confusion of the two prefixes in-.

    Ref: inflammable on Etymonline

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] 15 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Merriam-Webster says this:

    "When cooking over a gas stove, avoid wearing loose, (flammable/inflammable) clothing that could catch fire easily." Which word is correct: flammable or inflammable?

    It's a trick question. Both flammable and inflammable are correct, as they both mean "capable of being easily ignited and of burning quickly." This makes no sense to the Modern English speaker. In English, we think of in- as a prefix that means "not": inactive means "not active," inconclusive means "not conclusive," inconsiderate means "not considerate." Therefore, inflammable should mean "not flammable."

    [...]

    What do you do? If you want to keep things crystal clear, choose flammable when you are referring to something that catches fire and burns easily, and use the relatively recent nonflammable when referring to something that doesn't catch fire and burn easily. Inflammable is just likely to enflame confusion.

    Personally I use "inflammable", but if I were writing warning posters I would have to reconsider that.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago

    Cause the verb is inflame and means to place a flame in on on something, as opposed to not flame. The problem being in both inflammable and the issue the OP of the image is the notion of re-bracketing. Rather than think of it as [inflame]able it gets converted into in[flammable] in the minds of new readers/listeners which flips the in- prefix meaning to not rather than in/on like it is supposed to be.

  • source
  • parent
  • [+] 4 points 3 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    Went off really just means everything :3. "Wow you really went off on that guy" = yelled at someone, "the milk went off" = spoiled, "we went off on an adventure" = left to travel and so on

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments