English lesson [2]

[Handley_Page]

I was asked the other day what the difference is between
Inflammable ( as it it will burn)
and
Flammable (ditto)

I think it is one and the same, but. . .

 

[AirRichard101]

Answer: Flammable and inflammable mean exactly the same thing... burns easily.

Why are there two different words? According to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, back in the 1920s the National Fire Protection Association urged people to start using the word 'flammable' instead of 'inflammable' (which is the original word) because they were concerned some people might think inflammable meant not-flammable. Actually, the in- in inflammable was derived from the Latin preposition meaning en- (like enflamed), not the Latin prefix meaning -un. It's not like everyone knew the derivation of the word, so the change probably made sense. However, confusion persists today regarding which word to use.

Credit: Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph.D. from Googling flammable vs inflammable

 

[Handley_Page]

Thank you, Richard (and source)

 

[glynndah]

I was asked the other day what the difference is between
Inflammable ( as it it will burn)
and
Flammable (ditto)

I think it is one and the same, but. . .

What's the difference?

Two letters, really.

 

[CDWilder]

What's the difference?

Two letters, really.

{rimshot}

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

There is no such thing as 'flammable.'

But there are numerous ignorant and illiterate people - principally in governments and bureaucracies around the world, and even, these days in what is obscenely called 'academia' - and that is why things are in the hell of a mess that they in fact, are.

By all means, go ahead and insist that 'you' are clever or forceful in getting your mindlessly self-important way and using 'flammable;' if that's what 'you' want to do, whoever 'you' are, who might want to do it.

The idea that English is a living language still bows to rules about logic and rationality: a thing can have the tendency to go up in flames - or, it can be MADE to burn. Well, anything can be MADE to burn, for example if you throw lots of cruise missiles at it, as is the American wont. 'Flammable' is nonsense, unless you want to force meanings where they do not naturally belong. Perhaps by throwing lots of TLIMS at it.

Far be it from me, though, to fail to admit I am a snob. Why, I'm certain I heard The Queen of England use the word 'flammable...' But then, I am an actual aristocrat, and she is from a usurper family with no genuine aristocracy in them, shoe-horned into place by a bunch of thieving merchants and back-stabbing cut-throats.

Blaring something all across the world stage because you have the machinery to do so doesn't make a thing so, no matter how many times you photograph the same baby foaming at the mouth from chemical weapons and getting Bill O'Reilly to tisk-tisk about it lots.

There is no such 'English' word as 'flammable.' There probably IS, an American word 'flammable' though, just as there is an American phrase 'health care' when they mean 'health INDUSTRY,' or wealth when they mean print-ups and debt, or power when they mean grabbing the glory won by others, and education when they mean credentials, and honesty and integrity and democracy when they mean black ops death squads answering to Kissinger and Cheney or the Irgun, not to mention Diebold voting machines, and money when they mean Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs taxpayer looting, and government shutdowns so long as it isn't in the 50% of the GDP spend of the military and defense industry... Et cetera et cetera et cetera.

(I just got an email from some Arab agreeing with me... And asking whether I would like to do something meaningful against 'The Great Satan.' To which I replied, you mean against England, afterall, Lucifer, IS an Englishman. I have THAT on the authority of Peter Cook!)

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

There is a possibility of using the word 'non-flammable,' as in something that is unable to catch fire under most circumstances.

 

[49greg]

I grew up in the sixties in a Brit colony and went to Brit schools. As an American I learned that there were a lot of spelling differences and many words that meant different things. "Pants" comes to mind. As does "Rubber".

At that time, as I remember it, the Americans said "Inflammable" to indicate that something would easily go up in flames, for example - gasoline/petrol.

The Brits would look down their figurative noses and quietly insist that the yanks were uneducated boors, and that the proper word was "Flammable".

 

[sr71plt]

From the Collins Dictionary (a British usage authority):

flammable: liable to catch fire.

inflammable: 1. easily set on fire. 2. excitable.

Neither is marked as being preferable to the other.

 

[49greg]

From the Collins Dictionary (a British usage authority):

flammable: liable to catch fire.

inflammable: 1. easily set on fire. 2. excitable.

Neither is marked as being preferable to the other.

Yaaayyyyy. They accepted our version too.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

Collins is rubbish.

The Original Concise Oxford English dictionary, basically the child of Dr. (Samuel) Johnson, is the ONLY English Dictionary and I personally would not accept versions of even this beyond around 1984(!), since after the University started to accept money instead of family history at the colleges as the first basis for entry there.

Not only that, but ONLY grammarians and men and women of Letters whose English education is rooted in something the Sitwells might recognize could have anything worth listening to on an expanded explaination of this matter.

'Flammable' is rare, and has a nuanced meaning not the same as 'inflammable.'

By all means though, accept what is not only second rate, but tainted as an 'authority' on written and spoken proper English.

Now here's the problem you may have with understanding me and people like me: Jamaican slang IS proper English - it is a dialect of English - whereas 'flammable' in place of 'inflammable' is deviating too far away from the 'rare' to be considered correct actual ENGLISH...

I don't accept that American is strictly speaking, a dialect of English. It is American-English, in the same way that an 'African American' is not a Sudanese, for instance, or a Congolese, but an African American.

Don't use 'flammable.' Unless you WANT to speak and write identifiably American English. Someone like Dorothy L. Sayers, for example, would deliberately make her character Peter Whimsy say things like 'flammable' as an affectation of the idle and wealthy aristocracy mimicking their American cousins often with tongue in cheek, or even just simply as a typical self-involved idle affectation of the privileged and arrogant idle...

 

[ishtat]

Collins is rubbish.

The Original Concise Oxford English dictionary, basically the child of Dr. (Samuel) Johnson, is the ONLY English Dictionary and I personally would not accept versions of even this beyond around 1984(!), since after the University started to accept money instead of family history at the colleges as the first basis for entry there.

Not only that, but ONLY grammarians and men and women of Letters whose English education is rooted in something the Sitwells might recognize could have anything worth listening to on an expanded explaination of this matter.

'Flammable' is rare, and has a nuanced meaning not the same as 'inflammable.'

By all means though, accept what is not only second rate, but tainted as an 'authority' on written and spoken proper English.

Now here's the problem you may have with understanding me and people like me: Jamaican slang IS proper English - it is a dialect of English - whereas 'flammable' in place of 'inflammable' is deviating too far away from the 'rare' to be considered correct actual ENGLISH...

I don't accept that American is strictly speaking, a dialect of English. It is American-English, in the same way that an 'African American' is not a Sudanese, for instance, or a Congolese, but an African American.

Don't use 'flammable.' Unless you WANT to speak and write identifiably American English. Someone like Dorothy L. Sayers, for example, would deliberately make her character Peter Whimsy say things like 'flammable' as an affectation of the idle and wealthy aristocracy mimicking their American cousins often with tongue in cheek, or even just simply as a typical self-involved idle affectation of the privileged and arrogant idle...

Collins is a reasonably good cheap dictionary and is the 'Official' Scrabble dictionary.

Johnson was not the father of the Concise, the Shorter, the pocket, or indeed any of the Oxford Dictionaries. Frederick Furnivall and especially James Murray were the men primarily responsible for the OED. Much of the original case for a 'New' dictionary was based on the correct perception that Johnson's work was no longer adequate.

Murray in particular sought from the start the direct input from many American sources. His prime American contributors were the superbly qualified Francis March, and the more notorious WC Minor.

Your adherence to the Sitwells as the arbiters of English standards shows a surprising respect for the views of the lower middle class - and in case you are wondering, that remark was neither flammable nor inflammable, but inflammatory.

Note. The OED first notes inflammable in 1770 and flammable in 1800 and recognizes the legitimacy of both.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

Indeed. I'm fairly sure an ancestor of mine actually used the word 'flammable' in his 'Counterblast.'

So that should tell you my affection for the LOWER middle classes.

Anyway, he was wrong.

'Flammable' is rare, as the OED says, because it should not be used regularly by people speaking and writing ENGLISH. My ancestor could possibly have been forgiven, since he was partly French. A la flamme with 'flammable,' I say.

And I sincerely thank you for pointing out that the estimable Dr. Johnson did NOT author the OED - especially the part wherein you said 'or indeed ANYTHING Oxford!!' Here we have once again, another instance of Oxford claiming the centre stage for stuff they did not pioneer, but pushed along into fame and fortune under their own banner.

Johnson was a genius who authored in a pub, so I seem to recall from having read it so somewhere. And in fact, I have a bad print picture of that pub on my library wall. It's next to a place called 'King's Pies,' and beside 'Cottom's Drapers.'

Legitimate is only legitimate in the same sense that the Windsors are the current legitimate Royal Family of the United Kingdom.

And I would never use the word 'flammable.' But you can, as it does appear in various bad dictionaries. There are people though, who would know what THEY would think of you, were you to use it in their company, and not be merely quoting my ancestor when you did it. You might not care what such people thought. And it therefore matters not what they do think.

Carelessness, is, the very heart and soul of the age.

In the end, I'm afraid this point is going to be a matter of who buttons their two or three button coats only with the top one or two buttons. I do, and I suggest that those who attend their London tailers do as well.

It isn't as if we don't understand someone when they say a thing is 'flammable.' And the word appears in dictionaries - as RARE. You see, really, it is also 'rare,' to have a white bow-tie with a white coat; in the sense that it is not the done thing, but butlers are permitted to wear such combinations to denote their level in a group of 'gentlemen,' and maybe also because butlers are RARE when in the midst of a group of gentlemen in their library. I.E. it is WRONG, it is gauche, it is incorrect, but it is, nevertheless of use, to denote the declasse, for instance.

Flammable, is not a substitute word for inflammable, of that you may be quite sure.

'Rare,' as in 'will raise eyebrows among the cultivated.' Not 'rare' as in 'you are so clever as to use some exotic version of a word that no one else much knows.'

Don't use it.

The real meaning of its existence in the OED, is where people use it in this form: 'non-flammable.' And by this they mean 'not going to burn,' and they drop off the 'in' (in inflammable) for convenience or euphony or because it makes the meaning sound more obvious. Non-inflammable 'sounds' a little convoluted as a word.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

I guarantee you, that the only instance of the word in the OED - at least in the ones I have right here in front of me - are to do with its use in the articulated word 'non-flammable,' and for exactly the reason I said.

It is not a substitute for 'inflammable' on its own.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

In her memoir my 3rd great grandmother, Susannah Teague Brooks-Johnson reveals my Johnson line, and Samuel's line both came from the small town of Lichfield Staffordshire. My line emigrated to Maryland in the 1600s. She wasn't certain of the connection, but the town was small then.

My suspicion is my line, Andrew Johnsons line, and Samuel all have a common grandfather, another writer named Samuel Johnson who was an Anglican bomb-thrower who James I had flogged 300 times for his rude treatment of the king.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

As I understand it there are two ways to create inflammable, that is IN has two Latin meanings; one of the INs negates FLAMMABLE.

 

[emap]

Oh what the hell, for those who actually do things besides argue over who is the premier author of a fucking dictionary. As it was explained to me flammable and inflammable mean the same thing but are used in different circumstances.

As in, inflammable is used to say don't get fire next to it. So you would say, 'The fumes over there are inflammable so don't smoke.'

Flammable is used when you want to find out if something will burn if you do something to it. Such as, 'Do you think that shit on the ground over there is flammable?'

Is that in a dictionary? No though it probably should be because it makes sense to me. English is one seriously fucked up confusing language and it really needs to have talking heads who don't frequent forums sit down and do a comprehensive dictionary/style book again.

 

[DeYaKen]

I actually experienced a guy delivering a seminar who use inflammable as if it was the opposite of flammable. He thought the in was a prefix to reverse the meaning as in capable and incapable.

The guy was a teacher. What hope is there?

 

[oggbashan]

The International Standards Organisation uses 'flammable' as the word for 'likely to ignite or burn'.

 

[sr71plt]

The point is that both the U.S. and British publishing systems accept the words being used interchangeably. English isn't a precise language. Anyone who has a problem with that is just stuck with the problem being them, not the usage systems.

 

[TxRad]

English, the language that spent most of its youth mugging other languages for the prefixes and suffixes in their pockets, and its later years, trying to confuse the hell out of the rest of the world.