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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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"Why do the words flammable and inflammable both exist when they mean the same? "
Because inflammable was originally the correct word, derived from Latin. Because the preffix "in" has different connotations in English and in Latin people got confused as to whether something "inflammable" would catch fire (in English "in" is usually a negation prefix, which it isn't in Latin).
Because of the confusion, translation began to get mixed up and the word "flammable" began to be in more popular usage. The word "Inflammable" has since been in decline.
I listened to a teaching company lecture on the English language |
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