"Inflammable" is a dangerous word.

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It means the same thing as "flammable", but it is commonly thought to mean "not flammable".

It's not dangerous. I just now said it three times and nothing caught fire.

A word expert on the radio made that point years ago.

Tanker trucks were emblazoned with the word "inflammable".

And folks thought it meant "fire proof" which is the opposite of what it means.

So they switched to using the then totally made up word "flammable" to decorate trucks carrying gasoline or other inflammable substances. And that's how "flammable" got born as a word, and why we now have two competing words for the same thing.

The English language is so complex and odd. Inflammable means "really flammable". But "infamous" doesn't really mean "not famous", which I used to think, or "really famous" like a lot people think it does. It means being known by most people for negative reasons, or for being feared and hated, like an infamous torture or an infamous dictator.

What's more, I used to get really confused when I read in a video game magazine when I was younger that the Mario Bros. were a pair of "infamous plumbers", because it either made them sound like they were not famous, which they definitely are, or that they were evil or universally hated, when they are actually beloved by many gamers, even in this day and age.

Anyway... whenever I've seen something that was labeled flammable or inflammable there would be a fire symbol on it which I knew meant you had to keep it away from fire and other sources of high heat.

The other day my mother was surprised to learn that inflammable means flammable. It was a trivia question in one of those little papers with jokes and stuff they usually have in restaurants.

Having never played the Mario Brothers games I don't know anything about them beside what the mustached characters look like.

My guess would be that they might be mischevious. But not downright evil.

So you're right that the adjective "infamous" wouldn't apply.

To me "infamous" is reserved for true evil.

Anything less than that would only be "notorious".

Storyville, the legendary part of turn of the 20th century New Orleans where jazz was born, where all of the bordellos, strip joints, and gambling dens, where, was a "notorious" part of town.

In contrast a Nazi death camp like Buchenwald, where unimaginable numbers died, would be "infamous".

FDR rightfully stated that Pearl Harbor Day was "a date that will live in infamy" ( as will 9-11).

Its a sliding scale. A person like John Dillinger might be classified as either notorious or as infamous.

But I don't see how the Mario Brothers even make it to "notorious".

They may have to settle for just "famous".

But speaking of the complexities of English.

In the above post I used the word "mischevious". And the site auto correct keeps underlining it because its misspelled. Tried several spellings. I still haven't got it right.

Sometimes you can figure out how to spell a word by breaking it down by meaning. So I tried to do that.

Okay.

Mischievous is ultimately based upon the word "achieve".

If you make the honor roll ...its something that you "achieve".

If you do something naughty then its a negative, so they put "mis" in front of it.

BUT... you cant "mischieve", nor can you rack up a collection of "mischievments".

All that you can do is... indulge in "mischief". Kinda inconsistent!

Mischievous. Okay. Just looked it up. It's spelled "mischievous". Like its pronounced. Duh.

Maybe a thousand years ago folks both pronounced it, and spelled it, the way I was spelling it. Mis-cheev- E-us (like "devious") which would be consistent with its meaning. But since then they have not only clipped the pronunciation, they have also clipped the spelling. Okay. Got it.