this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2026
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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?
"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.
I also like to reduce the likelihood of being understood.
:-)
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.
Also "off" meaning both off and on
The alarm went off (the alarm started) The light went off (the light suddenly stopped producing light)
Wen 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
Cuz the prefix "in-" can mean both "not" (as in invalid) and "to cause to be" (as in indebted)
But why?
Yes.
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.
You won't be too surprised by some of them actually: bog, bourbon, druid, shamrock, corgi, whiskey, crumpet. Others you'll find here have more circuitous routes where maybe just one phoneme stems from old Gaelic or something, into Latin, into Germanic or Old French, then into Old English, like "ambassador." I'm guessing most of the really Celtic words are used in the British Isles more than elsewhere in the English-speaking world.
You won't be too surprised by some of them actually: bog, bourbon, druid, shamrock, corgi, whiskey, crumpet. Others you'll find here have more circuitous routes where maybe just one phoneme stems from old Gaelic or something, into Latin, into Germanic or Old French, then into Old English, like "ambassador." I'm guessing most of the really Celtic words are used in the British Isles more than elsewhere in the English-speaking world.
You won't be too surprised by some of them actually: bog, bourbon, druid, shamrock, corgi, whiskey, crumpet. Others you'll find here have more circuitous routes where maybe just one phoneme stems from old Gaelic or something, into Latin, into Germanic or Old French, then into Old English, like "ambassador." I'm guessing most of the really Celtic words are used in the British Isles more than elsewhere in the English-speaking world.
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.
I just wish they'd taught it as a skill when I took languages in school. Reading became sooooo much easier once I understood.
In French you can say ininflammable
Also in Italian: infiammabile
Latin
Bah! Latin. Always making everything more difficult than it needs to be