Word Geek

[xSilverPhinx]

How come inflammable is not the opposite of flammable?

Yes! WTF is that all about!

Inquiring minds want to know so I googled it.

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/1578/why-are-not-infamous-and-inflammable-the-opposite-of-famous-and-flammable-like-i

They are actually built using the prefix in- (even if English borrowed the whole word including the prefix). It is just that there are two prefixes that look like "in", and both came from Latin, and both were the source of these two words we borrowed. In both cases it is in #2 from kiamlaluno's NOAD quotation. This morpheme in is etymologically the same in that the English prefix en comes from, in words like "enable", "enclose", "encrypt", etc

Just to confuse things...

[Tank]

Thank you xSPx!

[The Magic Pudding]

How come inflammable is not the opposite of flammable?

Yes! WTF is that all about!

You can inflame a situation.
Did inflame/inflammable come first and flammable is a shortened form?

[OldGit]

xSP's explanation is right, of course.

inflammable
early 15c., in medicine, "liable to inflammation," from M.Fr. inflammable and directly from M.L. inflammabilis, from L. inflammare (see inflame). As "able to be set alight," c.1600. Related: Inflammability.

flammable
1813, from L. flammare "to set on fire" (from flamma; see flame) + -able.

At a guess, the form without in- sounded more sciency to whoever coined it.

[DeterminedJuliet]

"Disgruntled"
Why isn't "gruntled" a word?

[Pharaoh Cat]

My new favorite word is fungible, which refers to anything that can be readily replaced by another of its kind because all of its kind are functionally identical.  The word functional shares etymological roots with fungible.

Bushels of wheat, dollar bills, and electrons are all fungible.  Cars aren't, even if year and make are identical, because a car's history can change it in functionally significant ways, usually bad, as in wear and tear.  Humans aren't fungible, not only because of personal history, but also because of personal genetics.

I sometimes wonder if elementary particles really are fungible.  Theorists treat them as such yet maybe wear and tear matters at every level, quantum or otherwise.

Even bushels of wheat and dollar bills can have such an extreme history of damage as to cease being of normal use, for example if a bushel of wheat were dropped in the ocean, or if a dollar bill were shredded.  Fungibility is an example of abstraction imposed on reality by the power of sapience, and can be negated by the facts on the ground in an actual specific case.  We can learn relevant facts about the history of a bushel of wheat or of a dollar bill.  Maybe someday we'll be able to learn relevant facts about the history of an individual electron.
 

[Pharaoh Cat]

I got this "I club" idiom from DeterminedJuliet in the Baby Seals thread here in this same section.



I love that!  Here are two more I made via Paint:

[squidfetish]

I always liked discombobulated - to confuse or disconcert; upset; frustrate: 

[xSilverPhinx]

I should make a bumper sticker out of that one. 

[Pharaoh Cat]

Cool article on verbing: http://grammar.about.com/od/grammarfaq/f/verbingfaq.htm

[Dee]

This is great!!  LOL

[Pharaoh Cat]

The neo prefix is hard to pin down as to spelling.  Look at these: (1) Neoplatonism; (2) neo-Darwinism; (3) neoconservatism.  All correct as to capitalization and hyphenation!  English is scary.