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Path: utzoo!lsuc!msb
From: msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: (in)flammable
Message-ID: <478@lsuc.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 5-Mar-85 02:51:34 EST
Article-I.D.: lsuc.478
Posted: Tue Mar  5 02:51:34 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 5-Mar-85 03:35:50 EST
References: <366@tymix.UUCP>
Reply-To: msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader)
Organization: Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto
Lines: 16
Summary: Latin derivation doesn't mean not recently coined

> According to The American Heritage Dictionary -
> flammable - ... [ from Latin *flammare*, to blaze, from *flamma*, FLAME].
> 
> Thus, the etymology goes all the way back to Latin, and is NOT
> a coinage of the industrial age, according to this source.

Non sequitur!  As a counterexample I present "insulin", whose etymology
is from the Latin *insula*, island.  This word is recent enough that it
doesn't make the main section of the OED.  Isaac Asimov says it was
coined in 1916.  There are lots of these modern classical-derived words,
though most seem to be from Greek rather than Latin.

As I said, the OED gives "flammable" in the 18th century, so it appears
to actually be an older word that was revived in the 20th century.

Mark Brader