Anders Andersson wrote:
On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 5:16 PM, Ian Zimmerman <[email protected]> wrote:
I have mused about this myself. The most curious thing is that English
is not even consistent with itself here. Think about the title of a
famous enlightenment era novel. The meaning of the nouns is precisely
inverted from the adjectives.
Inflammable means flammable? What a country!
As I understand it (from a United States perspective) the word
"inflammable" derives from "likely to burst into flames". So yes,
inflammable = flammable != unflamable (which is not a word; the
opposite of flammable is nonflammable)
Once upon a time it was common in this country for safety warnings
to use the word inflammable (e.g. "inflammable -- no smoking"). But
because of the tendency to cause the confusion noted above, these days
the word "flammable" is almost always used instead for warnings.
If you are looking for consistency and simple rules you can't do much
worse than English!
Jim
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