Interesting. Language is a fascinating thing.
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14 years ago
Stanley is buying Black and Decker for $4.5 billion in stock
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14 years ago
Ah, I see. So if it's old enough it becomes a word.
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14 years ago
It is only in -recent- (sloppy) usage that the two words have been treated as more-or-less interchangeable.
As recently as the mid 1960s, in technical usage, the two terms were as different in meaning as 'explosive' and 'high explosive'.
The difference -- exactly as with explosive/high-explosive -- was in how fast (and how readily) a thing burned. "Inflammable" things were _more_ sensitive/volatile than merely "flammable" ones.