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Post by Pete on May 28, 2008 15:01:39 GMT
Thanks, goofy, that's interesting. Are you a linguist or is this just a hobby, 'cos you appear to be extremely well-informed.
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Post by Dr Mildr on May 28, 2008 18:34:30 GMT
(dis)mantle Today I dismantled a car. If I put it back together will I be mantling it? Yes, according to Mr Mildr. He loves using these non-existent opposites. However, as I'm sure you all know, birds of prey mantle (their wings) over prey or their eggs/chick to protect them. And I've just proofread a dire document in which the first two sentences in the first paragraph contained invaluable help and valued assistance. Why? (Or is it only me/I who finds this slightly irritating?)
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Post by goofy on May 28, 2008 18:52:07 GMT
Thanks, goofy, that's interesting. Are you a linguist or is this just a hobby, 'cos you appear to be extremely well-informed. Thanks. I'm not a linguist, this is just a hobby, and I like looking in dictionaries.
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Post by Tone on May 28, 2008 21:01:59 GMT
Vv, >easier to replace panels than to repair<Sounds like the "my grandfather's axe" scenario! (or "ax", if you prefer.) Tone
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 19, 2008 7:25:46 GMT
Came across this one today (ABC News Online) - a quotation from organisational psychologist, Ian Plowman (my emphasis): Having not previously encountered inodorous I consulted the SOED and found: My first guess tallied with definition #1, but the person quoted no doubt intended #2. "Your behaviour stinks?" Perhaps. I'm still not sure it was the best word.
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Post by Dave M on Jun 19, 2008 8:14:01 GMT
I think he just had the wrong word. If he WAS intending a "stink" reference, then he'd have said Provided the people aren't ... acting in ways that are odorous, surely.
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Post by Twoddle on Jun 19, 2008 8:26:43 GMT
Perhaps he meant "odious". Being an organisational psychologist (a what? ) doesn't mean he has to be good at English.
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 19, 2008 11:19:36 GMT
Thanks, Twod - I reckon odious does the trick there.
I've just now returned from dinner with a retired psychiatrist (formerly one of Oz's highest positioned psychs) - and he knows the bloke quoted in that news item. According to my dinner companion, the quoted fellow is known to be something of a master of the malapropism.
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Post by Dave M on Jun 19, 2008 11:24:00 GMT
Organisational psychologist - I hadn't come across this before, but I'm guessing one who studies the psychology of organisations, rather than individuals? As in "crowd psychology", "tribal mentality", perhaps.
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Post by Verbivore on Jun 19, 2008 11:38:30 GMT
Organisational psychology is quite a big speciality in Oz academe - and yes, it's the study of the psychology of / within / between organisations rather than of the individual human.
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Post by Rajesh Valluri AKA Raj on Jun 21, 2008 14:09:39 GMT
The sameWe have discussed previously the fact that inflammable and flammable are the same thing. Are there any other examples of this? I always thought, flammable is something that could burn while inflammable is something that would actually cause things to burn. For instance, a piece of dry wood is flammable but a bucket of kerosene is inflammable.
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Post by Dave M on Jun 21, 2008 16:03:36 GMT
It's usually the "highly" ignitable substances which get the "inflammable" labels, so that may be behind how you see that, Vallurirajesh. I don't think that's a firm difference, though - it's more that "inflammable" means "can be set INto flames". Where a word begins with "in", it's often in one of two families: one where the "in" means "not" ( indiscreet, inadequate, inaccessible, inaccurate, etc), and another where the "in" means ... well ... "in"! Here, we find incandescent, incendiary, incarcerate, incarnate, incensed, inception, incentive, incest, incision, include, and so on. Luckily, we've never come across words like "to clude" or "cest", so we don't suddenly think that "include" means "not to clude" or that "incest" means whatever is the opposite of "cest" ( ). Because we ARE familiar with "flammable" in its own right, we get distracted by the "in~" version. However, it's really just happily sitting alongside incendiary and incandescent, in showing its burning abilities.
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Post by Paul Doherty on Jun 21, 2008 17:04:01 GMT
And is it true that flammable is an invented word -- invented because research showed that many people thought inflammable means "not flame-able" and thus items marked as inflammable could be safely used near a heat source?
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Post by Tone on Jun 21, 2008 20:59:46 GMT
>And is it true that flammable is an invented word<
Yup! By the (equivalents of) the Health and Safety industry.
And, as their usage is dictated by decree (in the UK, at least) they fail as a TS!
Tone
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Post by goofy on Jun 25, 2008 17:04:26 GMT
And is it true that flammable is an invented word -- invented because research showed that many people thought inflammable means " not flame-able" and thus items marked as inflammable could be safely used near a heat source? Apparently not. flammable was adopted by the National Fire Protection Association in the 1920s, but its first appearance was in 1813, coined "to serve in a translation from Latin".
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