To Leave No Room For Misunderstanding

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30512, 6 August 1964, Page 16

To Leave No Room For Misunderstanding

Warnings are useful only if everyone understands what they say. This is why the “ New Zealand Stan- “ dards Bulletin ” advocates replacing the word “ inflammable ” by “flammable ”. Accidents have been caused through “ inflammable ” being taken to mean “ non-flammable ’’—perhaps by the same persons who, as a Fourth Leader in “ The Times ” once said, take “ inflame ” to mean quench and “ inflammatory ” to mean soothing, and to whom an “ incendiary ” Is a member of the fire brigade. The British Standards Institution adopted “ flammable ” in 1955, so the New Zealand standards authorities will not be acting out of turn. The Shorter Oxford and the Concise Oxford Dictionaries authorise both “ inflammable ” and “flammable” (meaning “inflammable”!); and the Shorter Oxford gives the latter an ancestry of at least 150 years.

But “ flammable ” is not a word one can admire, and the negative that is preferred by the standards authorities in both Britain and New Zealand (“ non“flammable”) is hideous. It will be a long time before the use of “flammable” and “non-flam- “ mable ” is so general as to put an end to the present dangers. The “New Zealand Standards Bulletin” points out that the new convention can be useful only if “inflammable” is carefully avoided; “obvi- “ ously, the rarer it becomes, the greater the danger “ that someone will take it for * non-flammable ’ with “ the possible consequence of an explosion ”, “Inflammable” is unlikely to be discharged from further literary service. If it is to be supplanted by “ flammable ” in technical and scientific vocabularies it might be advisable to require labels and warnings for the protection of the public to carry additionally some such phrase as “Easily set on fire”. This would surely be beyond any possibility of misunderstanding.