when did they change inflammable into flammable ?
- posted
6 years ago
in?
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- posted
6 years ago
Since before I was at school; If you were in building control, I'd hope you knew the unambiguous phrase is "non-inflammable" or "non-flammable".
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- posted
6 years ago
yes yes but things that were "inflammable" changed to "flammable" overnight...think I was at school at the time .....It was allways "flammable" in the states I think...does anybody know? ....
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- posted
6 years ago
In message , Jim GM4DHJ ... writes
It was certainly before 1980 (possibly well before).
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- posted
6 years ago
I would say these signs and labels are from *well* before 1980
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- posted
6 years ago
interesting thanks .....
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6 years ago
Dunno, but I bet it was them bloody furriners in the EU who thought inflammable was the opposite of flammable. The same ones who are now saying you can't have soya 'milk' 'cos it doesn't come from a cow.
Leave our effin' language alone! Roll on Brexit! :)
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- posted
6 years ago
OED gives the known usage of :-
Inflammable from 1605 Flammable from 1813 Non-inflammable from 1817 Non-flammable from 1898
All cases of the the first two related to fieryness (either of material or someone's character) and all of the last two related to the lack of fieryness.
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- posted
6 years ago
It was "our own" Labour Guvmint who banned "Digestive" biscuits because they didn't aid digestion - and many other names, too, but that's the only one that springs to mind.
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6 years ago
Eh? Since when? Fake news? My wife regularly buys them, both plain and chocolate.
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6 years ago
The 1960s in common use on labels &c. IIRC.
If you're used to inflammable flammable sounds like the opposite.
(Invaluable, priceless, disannul, unloose... All the negation prefixes/suffixes can mean their opposite.)
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- posted
6 years ago
To me, aged 66, (+ premature trousers rolled) "flammable" and "inflammable" are synonymous; and while I do not wish to inflame (sic) the discussion, given English is constantly changing, I'll be so bold as to invoke the OED which agrees that flammable has been revived in modern use - with its first example from an 1813 translation of Lucretius' "Nature of Things" :)
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- posted
6 years ago
Which begs the question, where did inflammable come from in the first place.
Brian
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- posted
6 years ago
Was flammable till some goose added the in which to me means non flammable
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6 years ago
Recorded use of inflammable (short for inflammable air, aka hydrogen) is before recorded use of flammable.
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- posted
6 years ago
Springs to imagination, more like. It isn't true.
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6 years ago
The original claim was on QI I think. That they are banned in the USA where they are called 'sweetmeal biscuits'
Wiki claims they are not banned. Simply not called that.
Maybe McVities established the term years ago and it might be considered a trademark.
Although 'waitrose essential digestive biscuits' would seem to give the lie to that, as well.
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- posted
6 years ago
Really? Not a very effective ban since they've never ceased to be on sale
- that I can remember.
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6 years ago
Probably came from the bent banana part of reality.