Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Flammable VS Inflammable VS Imflammable

Prefixes in English are unreliable,

sometimes its
un-
like unhealthy

sometimes it's 
in-
like inappropriate

sometimes it's 
dis-
like disfunctional

So we have inflammable, meaning easy to burn
Memory Tip: an infection is inflamed and the skin is hot to the touch

During World War 2 there was confusion about combustibles when some interpreted inflammable to mean not flammable (sometimes "in-" means not)

So flammable was used more and more frequently, until by the 1970s "inflammable" was completely phased out, and the negative was non-flammable.

Imflammable is just an error in spelling 



  





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