| 词组 | flammable, inflammable |
| 释义 | flammable, inflammable These two words are synonymous. Flammable is a much newer word, apparently coined in 1813 to serve in a translation from Latin. In the 1920s it was adopted by the National Fire Protection Association in place of inflammable. Underwriters and others interested in fire safety followed suit. The reason given for its adoption was the possibility that the in- of inflammable might be misunderstood as a negative prefix. We do not know whether such a misunderstanding has ever actually occurred. We have a 1949 citation in which a scientist working on a fireproof airplane engine is quoted as saying that in the proposed system the fuel would be "virtually inflammable." The clipping, however, is so shot through with typographical errors that we cannot be positive what was actually said. It does, however, suggest that there may be some basis for the concern about misunderstanding. The publicity campaign undertaken to urge wider adoption of flammable put the word in the public eye on numerous occasions over the years. Eventually the ivory tower—where nothing burns, apparently—began to be heard bemoaning the loss of a fine literary word (inflammable) which was being shunted aside by a "corrupt" form. The combination of publicity and occasional outbreaks of lamentation have probably helped in landing the subject in so many usage books. Our files show that both forms continue to be used. Flammable seems to be less common in British English than it is in American English and inflammable correspondingly more common. Flammable is used literally; figurative use belongs to inflammable: • The vision of a single young woman is said to have overcome the inflammable Monk —George Meredith, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, 1859 • But the inflammable and inflammatory materials were there to be ignited by critics of the scientific-military Establishment —Donald Fleming, Atlantic, September 1970 Nonflammable is the usual negative compound of flammable. |
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