One of my favourite aspects of language is the peculiar logic of it. It's more like architecture than math; while lacking in algorithms and precise, right-or-wrong answers, it does rely on structure - you can build a house of materials ranging from paper to granite, but certain things have to be in place to keep it from falling into a formless heap and, with a base of knowledge and application of sense, you can pretty well figure out what various objects are for. Language is the same way, with its parts of speech, marks of punctuation, prefixes and suffixes, and so on.
And then, for no apparent reason, it throws you a curveball. It all makes sense, right up until you get something like "inflammable." "In-" is a suffix usually meaning "not." Someone who is insane isn't sane; they might be incoherent, too, because coherency, or intelligible diction, usually comes from a well-ordered mind. So it seems that, if "flammable" means "readily set on fire," "inflammable" would mean "fireproof."
Except that it doesn't. Why this is the case I have no idea. It has, however, held a prominent place in my awareness since the ripe old age of three, thanks to a family friend and neighbour. Ray was, and presumably still is, a fantastic person - warm, kind, generous, hard-working, and funny. She lived next door to us with her husband and two grandsons, aged eight and three, whom she and her husband had taken on after their daughter's mental illness took a turn for the worse. Having another kid underfoot didn't really seem to bother her, so I spent a lot of time over there, convincing Stephan, the younger grandson, to eat insects.*
As you might imagine, given her outgoing personality, Ray had a lot of friends and therefore a lot of guests. I forget whether she and her husband had been smokers, or had purchased their guest room bed from a smoker, or what, but anyway, when I was three and a half or so, she decided to replace the stinky mattress with a high-quality inflatable one, on which Stephan and I, much to our disappointment, were forbidden to jump.
It really was a nice mattress, too. Ray called my mum in excitement to brag about it, her pride centering on the fact that not only was it comfortable, not only did it not reek of smoke, not only did it have a lifetime warranty, but it was also inflammable! The tags said so all over, in big red letters. Her guests, if crabby enough, might find something in her hospitality to complain of, but by golly they weren't gonna catch on fire!
From the other end of the phone, silence ensued. Stephan and I had paused our dedicated bug-hunt long enough to eavesdrop, and I heard, quite clearly, my mother's voice proclaim, "Ray, you do know that inflammable means the same thing as flammable, right?"
Thus began the Great Debate of Summer 1990. It ended with mum coming over to watch Ray touch a match to the very corner seam of the mattress, which proved my mother right by starting to melt while issuing a thin ribbon of acrid smoke. Ray immediately blew out the match.
At that point, Stephan and I, who had snuck inside (we were allowed in, but everything's more fun if you sneak,) skedaddled. That lesson stuck with me, though. Never trust a prefix, because just when you think you have it figured out, it will betray you, and no matter how hard you try, "inflammable" will still mean the same thing as "flammable," "intense" won't be a synonym for "relaxed," and nobody will ever, ever use "combobulated" in daily conversation.
*At the time, my greatest life ambition was to be a frog. Stephan, being slightly younger than me, had of course been press-ganged into a career as my minion and thus I had bestowed upon him the honour of being my right-hand frog. He didn't always exhibit the eager anticipation due this role, the ungrateful little twerp.
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