Flammable--capable of burning.
Inflammable -- capable of being set alight and then burning.
Non-inflammable -- not readily capable of being set alight.
Fireproof -- not capable of burning.


Of course anything is capable of burning at high enough temperature, so you have to take thes emeanings in the context of normal use.

A word may disappear from use, but that will not change the cognitive stream previosuly associated with it. However it will reduce the strength of agreement surrounding those cognitive events and therefore tend to make them become suppressed (as unexpressible, and not likely to be approved by others). It is the social fabric that changes, not the basic experiential fabric, which by nature is much richer and wider than can possibly be covered by agreed-on definitions.

It is a strange thing, and a bit of a sorrow to me, that we tend to block out from our consciousness things we cannot readily express to our peers. It puts the footing of individual thought on the wrong basis, requiring agreement to yield certainty, a very shaky and potentially treacherous basis indeed.


A