This was one of my favorite "word of the day" entries, a word every speaker tries to work into their speech, at Toastmasters. The person who introduced it gave the two definitions and then basically said "it's the only word I know that means its opposite" or something to that effect. It got liberal use in every speech, including mine, and I still don't feel comfortable using it correctly.
> Cleave is often cited as the go-to contronym: it can refer to splitting something apart and to uniting two things
Weird, I cannot remember ever seeing "cleave" used to mean "uniting two things".
"Inflammable" is my go-to example of a word that shouldn't exist in the English language. Causes too much confusion. I always use "flammable" and "nonflammable".
Yeah, never seen that usage of "cleave". I would have expected that sentence written with a different word: "People in the remote mountain villages still cling to their old traditions."
Ha, you make some good points and I would be ok with those words. But just because the root word (inflame) and some of its derived words are useful, that doesn't mean that we need to allow all possible prefix and suffix derivations of that root word.
Wow. You really want some arbiter of which words are "allowed" or not? That sounds like some real Ministry of Truth type shit. It seems especially weird on a tech site, when tech jargon has historically been rich with wordplay and word construction.
That one's fun, because they don't really mean the same. It's just that there usually is no functional difference between the meanings.
"to inflame" is to set something on fire. "to flame" is to be on fire. So something that's inflammable can be set on fire, something that's flammable can burn.
I would have said the same thing as you, but it now occurs to me that something that is already on fire must be flammable but it is hardly inflammable since you couldn't set it on fire again (without first putting it out at least).
You could also argue that some things, like most metal powders, are barely inflammable (very hard to light) but are very flammable (once they do burn they burn really well and are hard to put out)
The way it's used on warning labels, "inflammable" means it can combust without an obvious ignition. "Flammable" needs to be set on fire from an external source.
