Re: (In)flammable (WAS: Early Conlang Archives)
From: | Don Blaheta <dpb@...> |
Date: | Thursday, March 11, 1999, 20:29 |
Quoth FFlores:
> The inflammable=fammable issue is one of those curious
> "contradictions" of the English language that I've heard of.
It's a great thing to talk about, but the real reason for this is that
"in" in "inflammable" isn't the "not" prefix, it's the "cause to"
prefix. That is, the word isn't "in-flammable", but "inflam-mable".
Derived from "inflame". "Flammable" is actually the more recent
formation, presumably because people thought that "inflammable" seemed
to mean the opposite of what it really did.
*sigh*
--
-=-Don Blaheta-=-=-dpb@cs.brown.edu-=-=-<http://www.cs.brown.edu/~dpb/>-=-
After the game, the king and pawn go into the same box. -Italian Proverb