Unconceivable.
You keep saying that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
Unlock-able versus un-lockable
That’s mental bracketing for you.
TIL the thing I do when I’m trying to understand an ambiguous sentence has a name
Unlockable ass-lock
Is that ass on lock for being unlockable, or is that lock ass for being unlockable?
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:
Since 1980s use of the word, especially in safety warnings, has been sometimes discouraged lest it be misunderstood as “non-flammable” through confusion of the two prefixes in-.
So which is sanctioned…?
Merriam-Webster says this:
“When cooking over a gas stove, avoid wearing loose, (flammable/inflammable) clothing that could catch fire easily.” Which word is correct: flammable or inflammable?
It’s a trick question. Both flammable and inflammable are correct, as they both mean “capable of being easily ignited and of burning quickly.” This makes no sense to the Modern English speaker. In English, we think of in- as a prefix that means “not”: inactive means “not active,” inconclusive means “not conclusive,” inconsiderate means “not considerate.” Therefore, inflammable should mean “not flammable.”
[…]
What do you do? If you want to keep things crystal clear, choose flammable when you are referring to something that catches fire and burns easily, and use the relatively recent nonflammable when referring to something that doesn’t catch fire and burn easily. Inflammable is just likely to enflame confusion.
Personally I use “inflammable”, but if I were writing warning posters I would have to reconsider that.
Personally I use “inflammable”
I also like to reduce the likelihood of being understood.
Inflammable is just likely to enflame confusion
:-)
English-speakers are really unlucky to have one of the most ambiguous word for situations where the need for clarity is of such great importance, especially as it concerns safety, even saving lives.
Cuz the prefix “in-” can mean both “not” (as in invalid) and “to cause to be” (as in indebted)
But why?
Yes.
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.
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.
Where the words come from. Remember: English is many languages in a trench coat, not really its own set of hard rules.
Hell, even languages with hard rules like Japanese have some exceptions even without the modern trend of borrowing words from other languages!
In French you can say ininflammable
Also in Italian: infiammabile
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.
Latin
Bah! Latin. Always making everything more difficult than it needs 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)
Went 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.
One that used to confuse me when I started english was “on a bus”, “on a plane”, but “in a car”, so I can see where all those words can get confusing :3
I went off my head reading this
Should have been enflammable
At the end, both are the same.
You end up with something that isn’t locked.
I want my front door to be unlock-able, I don’t want it to be un-lockable.
The first one isn’t locked unless you unlock it.
Are we just making up language rules as we go?
Yes, throughout history, in fact.
And to answer the meme’s question, it can have either definition based on the context of usage.
almost always “able to be unlocked”. “not able to be locked” is usually “non-lockable” or “not lockable”.
I would never use that word in either context, neither one is coherent. I would say, Picard, where is Beverly Crusher! She must shackle me, before I am overcome!
Highly illockable
Redminds of the German “umfahren” (run over) which is the exact opposit of “umfahren” (drive around). (First is pronounced with a tiny pause after the second letter; the other is not.)
Even better is “Haare wachsen lassen”. One meaning is letting your hair grow, the other is waxing your hair. Pronounced exactly the same
Literally yes, we are.
Cause language is a toolkit to communicate ideas, and a toolkit frozen in glass is a useless toolkit.
You need to swap out that hammer when it starts getting damaged, or put back a screwdriver when you find out you need it again, or add new tools when you find that the tools you have now aren’t fit to purpose.
And sure, there’s some loose screws at the bottom of the bag, but they don’t harm anything, and very occasionally they come in useful.
Sokath, his eyes uncoverable.
The issue is the fact that the opposite action of locking is called unlocking and not something like delocking.
Depends on emphasis. Said with normal stress on the first syllable is “able to be unlocked”.
But if you pronounce it with extra emphasis on both of the first two syllables with a bit of a pause between, I think most people would think “not able to be locked”. Very context dependent though
I would say “non-lockable” means can’t be locked, and “unlockable” means can be changed from locked to unlocked, implying also being lockable.
But to answer the question, yes we are making up language as we go along. For one thing we’ve always done that, but recently the trend has accelerated as people strive to reduce complex ideas to simple, overgeneralized slang to avoid having to think as much or do as much thumb-typing.
