On Sun, 26 Dec 2004 19:20:43 -0600, !Jones
<
[email protected]> wrote:
>On 26 Dec 2004 15:42:59 -0800 in
><[email protected]>
>[email protected] said this:
>
>>Hi Phil
>>I'm dyslexic & my spelling really sucks. I never realized after all
>>these years that Mafic & Mavic were different names. I always thought
>>they were the same company. Are they different companies? Or what?
>>Thanks, John
>
>How come "ineffable" is in the dictionary; however, "effable" isn't?
>Thanks in advance for helping me to eff that.
>
>Jones
Dear Excitable Jones,
Well, partly because "ineffable" comes to us from Latin, via
Old French to Middle English.
But the real reason is that "ineffable" means much the same
as "unutterable" or "indescribable." The no-prefix opposites
of these words do not exist in normal speech because we
never need to describe anything as "utterable,"
"describable," or "effable"--those are the default
qualities, and only the exceptions require words to describe
them.
We have "flightless birds" like penguins and emus, but we
don't speak of "non-flightless" birds.
We also have "flying boats" in the navy, but no one speaks
of "non-flying" boats.
To drag things back to bicycles, we have "tires" and "flat
tires," but we scarcely ever speak of un-flat or non-flat
tires.
The default condition that requires no description may never
need or enjoy a description of its own.
I hope that this is not an (in)flammable topic (a different
linguistic conundrum).
Carl Fogel
