Went off really just means everything :3. “Wow you really went off on that guy” = yelled at someone, “the milk went off” = spoiled, “we went off on an adventure” = left to travel and so on
Since 1980s use of the word, especially in safety warnings, has been sometimes discouraged lest it be misunderstood as “non-flammable” through confusion of the two prefixes in-.
“When cooking over a gas stove, avoid wearing loose, (flammable/inflammable) clothing that could catch fire easily.” Which word is correct: flammable or inflammable?
It’s a trick question. Both flammable and inflammable are correct, as they both mean “capable of being easily ignited and of burning quickly.” This makes no sense to the Modern English speaker. In English, we think of in- as a prefix that means “not”: inactive means “not active,” inconclusive means “not conclusive,” inconsiderate means “not considerate.” Therefore, inflammable should mean “not flammable.”
[…]
What do you do? If you want to keep things crystal clear, choose flammable when you are referring to something that catches fire and burns easily, and use the relatively recent nonflammable when referring to something that doesn’t catch fire and burn easily. Inflammable is just likely to enflame confusion.
Personally I use “inflammable”, but if I were writing warning posters I would have to reconsider that.
English-speakers are really unlucky to have one of the most ambiguous word for situations where the need for clarity is of such great importance, especially as it concerns safety, even saving lives.
Because modern English is a combination of ancient Celtic languages with the various languages of the British Isles’s numerous populators and conquering forces across history, including but not limited to: Latin, German, Norse, and French. And spelling wasn’t really standardized until the printing press was invented, due in part to class stratification. But that’s another story lol. Suffice it to say, it’s more than a bit of a hodgepodge and you just gotta take it for what it is.
Romantic words were incorporated differently into other languages as the Roman Empire’s influence spread. Words like inflammable have more direct Latin roots than words like indebt. So where Inflammable comes directy from the latin inflammo, indebt came from old French and middle English, going from something like endetter and endetten, using the root word dete and dette, but stemming from the root Latin word, debitum. Then en became in at some point.
That’s how I understood it anyway through a very short amount of google searching. Anyone feel free to correct me.
As a French-speaker, it has always been my instinctual understanding from seeing the word and knowing how English has taken words from Latin and French.
Cause the verb is inflame and means to place a flame in on on something, as opposed to not flame. The problem being in both inflammable and the issue the OP of the image is the notion of re-bracketing. Rather than think of it as [inflame]able it gets converted into in[flammable] in the minds of new readers/listeners which flips the in- prefix meaning to not rather than in/on like it is supposed to be.
Ahh, I’ve been speaking english for over a decade, and I still sometimes get caught up with these and say the opposite thing of what I want
Like the whole thing of flammable and inflammable meaning the same thing… just why?
Also “off” meaning both off and on
The alarm went off (the alarm started) The light went off (the light suddenly stopped producing light)
Went off really just means everything :3. “Wow you really went off on that guy” = yelled at someone, “the milk went off” = spoiled, “we went off on an adventure” = left to travel and so on
As a non-native English speaker I sometimes struggle with those words added after verbs: off, on, up, down, etc.
I went off my head reading this
“flammable” actually has an interesting story:
Ref: inflammable on Etymonline
So which is sanctioned…?
Merriam-Webster says this:
Personally I use “inflammable”, but if I were writing warning posters I would have to reconsider that.
English-speakers are really unlucky to have one of the most ambiguous word for situations where the need for clarity is of such great importance, especially as it concerns safety, even saving lives.
:-)
I also like to reduce the likelihood of being understood.
Cuz the prefix “in-” can mean both “not” (as in invalid) and “to cause to be” (as in indebted)
But why?
Because modern English is a combination of ancient Celtic languages with the various languages of the British Isles’s numerous populators and conquering forces across history, including but not limited to: Latin, German, Norse, and French. And spelling wasn’t really standardized until the printing press was invented, due in part to class stratification. But that’s another story lol. Suffice it to say, it’s more than a bit of a hodgepodge and you just gotta take it for what it is.
What words come from Celtic languages? I thought it was all Germanic with Latin and French words being borrowed later.
Yes.
Romantic words were incorporated differently into other languages as the Roman Empire’s influence spread. Words like inflammable have more direct Latin roots than words like indebt. So where Inflammable comes directy from the latin inflammo, indebt came from old French and middle English, going from something like endetter and endetten, using the root word dete and dette, but stemming from the root Latin word, debitum. Then en became in at some point.
That’s how I understood it anyway through a very short amount of google searching. Anyone feel free to correct me.
As a French-speaker, it has always been my instinctual understanding from seeing the word and knowing how English has taken words from Latin and French.
Where the words come from. Remember: English is many languages in a trench coat, not really its own set of hard rules.
Hell, even languages with hard rules like Japanese have some exceptions even without the modern trend of borrowing words from other languages!
In French you can say ininflammable
Also in Italian: infiammabile
Cause the verb is inflame and means to place a flame in on on something, as opposed to not flame. The problem being in both inflammable and the issue the OP of the image is the notion of re-bracketing. Rather than think of it as [inflame]able it gets converted into in[flammable] in the minds of new readers/listeners which flips the in- prefix meaning to not rather than in/on like it is supposed to be.
Should have been enflammable
Latin
Bah! Latin. Always making everything more difficult than it needs to be