1
- easily set on fire易燃的:
inflammable materials.
易燃材料。
1.1
- figurative likely to provoke strong feelings〈喻〉易激动的; 易激怒的:
the most inflammable issue in US politics today.
当前美国政治中最易触发冲突的问题。
USAGE
The words inflammable and flammable both have the same meaning, 'easily set on fire'. This might seem surprising, given that the prefix in- normally has a negative meaning (as in indirect and insufficient), and so it might be expected that inflammable would mean the opposite of flammable, i.e. 'not easily set on fire'. In fact, inflammable is formed using a different Latin prefix in-, which has the meaning 'into' and here has the effect of intensifying the meaning of the word in English. Flammable is a far commoner word than inflammable and carries less risk of confusion.
派生词
inflammability
nouninflammableness
nouninflammably
adverb词源
early 17th cent.: from French, or from Latin inflammare (see INFLAME).