Edit: SERIOUSLY, THANK YOU—
BTW my confusions stems from them having the same meaning online
Flammable: “easily set on fire”
Inflammable: “easily set on fire”
Definitions from Oxford Languages
In: Other
Hmm, maybe people are too young to remember this!
Initially when I lived in the USA in the 1950’s, combustible materials were required to have a label stating “INFLAMMABLE” meaning they can inflame.
https://thumbs.worthpoint.com/zoom/images1/1/0518/04/shell-best-oil-tanker-truck-tin-toy_1_1dd26eda0e0d2fd838102200bf76eabe.jpg
However, this confused some workers, who didn’t know the meaning of ‘inflammable’ and guessed from the prefix that it meant non-flammable.
The clever solution was to actually *coin a new word that had never existed before* which was the word ‘flammable.’
Virtually anyone seeing a warning ‘flammable’ knew that the substance being carried was inflammable. Grammar perfectionists would be *annoyed* but accidents were prevented.
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