Open question to the floor.
Lots of English words use ‘in’ as a qualifier. Inadequate, inconsequential,indigestion, etc.
What all those words have in common is that the qualified word stands on its own and is made negative by the addition of ‘in-”.
But what about ‘tense’. In-tense does have a qualifier, but here ‘in-’ makes ‘tense’ stronger.
English. An annoying and confusing language.
24 August, 2008 at 3:47 pm
In-doubtedly
24 August, 2008 at 3:54 pm
In Latin, “in” is both a negative prefix AND a preposition.
In “intense”, the Latin origin is the verb “intendere”. The “in” in “intendere” is a preposition indicating movement in or towards.
In this case, the cause of the annoyance and confusion in English is the annoyance and confusion of Latin.
(This comment brought to you by the Oxford English Dictionary and Teach Yourself Latin).
24 August, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Stephen beat me to it
24 August, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Wot Stephen said.
25 August, 2008 at 9:45 am
which probably explains ‘inflammable’
25 August, 2008 at 9:59 am
The one that gets me is flammable and inflammable; both meaning burnable.
25 August, 2008 at 10:33 am
let’s americanise and just get rid of all these uneffiable words.
30 August, 2008 at 6:34 pm
No, let’s keep the wonderful in-consistencies we find in-side our wonderfully in-tensely, in-teresting langusage.