Did you know that flammable means “incombustible; not ignitable,” while inflammable means “combustible; ignitable”? But why did people reversed their meanings? Why did they put “flammable” in trucks instead of putting the “inflammable”?
Because whenever people see the word “flammable”, they are being cautious because they thought it means combustible, that it will put them to fire. But why? Why Mr. Anderson? Why? This makes me crazy it made me quote Agent Smith.
Why? Because in English grammar, we frequently use the prefix “in-” to make things or words negative. For example: ‘visible’ becomes ‘invisible’; ‘convenient’ becomes ‘inconvenient’.
Because of that widespread use of the prefix “in-” to negate words, inflammable is open to misinterpretation as if it were a negative word. Inflammable really means able to be inflamed (inflame+able). Something which cannot be burned is ‘nonflammable‘, not inflammable.
But there’s really nothing we can do with that. With the goal of making things clear with all people, to make it a debate and argument with others will only result into a huge misunderstanding and misinterpretation. So, people reversed the meanings of these two words.