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Path: utzoo!utcs!lsuc!msb
From: msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Semantic Reversals
Message-ID: <453@lsuc.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 28-Feb-85 10:55:21 EST
Article-I.D.: lsuc.453
Posted: Thu Feb 28 10:55:21 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 28-Feb-85 13:51:14 EST
References: <108@ISM780.UUCP> <398@hou5h.UUCP> <3003@Cascade.ARPA> <452@lsuc.UUCP>
Reply-To: msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader)
Organization: Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto
Lines: 22
Summary: more on "(in)flammable", from Lee Gold and me


Lee Gold (sdcrdcf!barryg) had trouble posting her followup to my
item about "flammable".  She wanted to say:

> Flammo and inflammo are separate Latin words, both with roughly the
> same meaning, so the history of the two parallel words goes back further
> than English.

This prompted me to check my references.  In English, the OED gives
"inflammable" as the older form by a couple of centuries, but "flammable"
is cited as early as 1813.  There was also at one time a less Latinistic
form "inflamable", apparently from "inflame".

My copy of Modern English Usage is not straight Fowler but the one edited
by Gowers.  It does not have "a nonword, chiefly useful in saving lives",
and now I don't know where I saw that.  Anyway, Fowler/Gowers does say that
"flammable" was presumably created because of a "supposed ambiguity" in
"inflammable" (even if it was derived from a separate Latin form), and he
points out that the existence of both words makes the matter worse.
Since he's talking about British English, he says "flammable" is "now rare".

Mark Brader