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Inflammable?

Posted By: Timothy Chow
Date: Thursday, 12 April 2012, at 3:06 p.m.

In Response To: Inflammable? (Gregg Cattanach)

The OED lists a couple of 19th century uses of "flammable" but then the word fell into disuse. It was revived in the 20th century precisely because of the confusion you allude to. The OED cites the BSI standards in 1959: "In order to avoid any possible ambiguity, it is the Institution's policy to encourage the use of the terms ‘flammable’ and ‘non-flammable’ rather than ‘inflammable’ and ‘non-inflammable’."

Other similar pairs include "ravel/unravel" and "loosen/unloosen."

Related oddities: "cleave" can mean "adhere to" or "split apart"; "best" and "worst" can be synonyms when used as verbs.

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