terminology

[Mike W.]

I tell them "I'm going to paddle the French Broad" and leave it to their imaginations.

You know she's got a 'sandy bottom'

[Alden]

Here's another terminology one for all of you Weldwood fans out there:

Apparently the words flammable and inflammable mean the same thing!

Inflammable actually means "combustible." Something that can be inflammed is inflammable. Simple, right? Think of inflammation (being inflammed), or inflammatory (something that will "burn" or cause trouble).

But since many people took the prefix "in" in inflammable to mean "not" -- as in the word inaccessible, people began to think inflammable meant "not flammable."

So because most people misunderstood a word, companies just started writing flammable -- a made-up word -- on the label of combustible products (like the red can Weldwood), instead of the proper word, inflammable. Just to be safe.

So apparently the word flammable is made up. But then again, aren't all words . . . ??

I think that whomever invented the word inflammable should have gone closer to Spanish/Latin and spelled it enflammable. That way it would be like "en fuego" (which is how people have frequently described me on a slalom course, by the way).

I learned all this the other day by reading The Elements of Style -- a great little book!

Alden

[sbroam]

Here's a question for you, if impossible is the opposite of possible, what's the opposite of imbecile?

[philcanoe]

from Medical Meanings By William S. Haubrich

imbecile comes from the Latin imbecillus, 'weak or feeble." It has been suggested that this might have been derived from a combination of the Lating in-,im-, used in the of "on,+ baculum, "a rod or staff," thus referring to one who was obliged to lean on a crutch. Before long the meaning was transferred from weakness in body to weakness in mind.

thus it might be possible to extrapolate, the opposite to imbecile might be C-boater,

as Kayaking would include both (and closely resemble) being in a weaker position, and chosen by someone too lame/weak to allow being on their knees; as such one might draw a certain correlation to the illustrated meaning of the Latin root word for imbecile

and thus the opposite of kayaking is c-boating, or is couch-potato (I forget)

[marclamenace]

Quite interesting now... So back to the original thread do we have a new terminology yet?

if imbecile = kayaking
c-boater = becile

Then I guess we just got "Beciling" as the only one word expression so far that means creeking but has to be done on your knees?

Or do we have to specify "River beciling"

Amazing how a bunch of die hard time killers seems to always get somewhere anyways.