Monday, May 7, 2007

Confused

Whenever I see a big tanker truck that says "Inflammable" I always wonder why it does not just say "Flammable". Could someone explain the difference between inflammable and flammable to me?

2 comments:

Michelle said...

There really isn't a difference.

From dictionary.com: "Inflammable and flammable both mean “combustible.” Inflammable is the older by about 200 years. Flammable now has certain technical uses, particularly as a warning on vehicles carrying combustible materials, because of a belief that some might interpret the intensive prefix in- of inflammable as a negative prefix and thus think the word means “noncombustible.” Inflammable is the word more usually used in nontechnical and figurative contexts: The speaker ignited the inflammable emotions of the crowd."

It's weird, I know.

Lisa said...

So silly. Thanks for taking the time to look it up for me! :)