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/ "Inflammable" can only mean "not flammable." The word "inflammable" can be derived by two different constructions, both following standard rules of English grammar: appending the suffix -able to the word inflame creates a word meaning "able to be inflamed", while adding the prefix in-to the word flammable creates a word meaning "not flammable".
An idiom is a common word or phrase with a figurative, non-literal meaning that is understood culturally and differs from what its composite words' denotations would suggest; i.e. the words together have a meaning that is different from the dictionary definitions of the individual words (although some idioms do retain their literal meanings – see the example "kick the bucket" below).
A sign using "Dahntahn" to mean "Downtown" in Downtown Pittsburgh.. Western Pennsylvania English, known more narrowly as Pittsburgh English or popularly as Pittsburghese, is a dialect of American English native primarily to the western half of Pennsylvania, centered on the city of Pittsburgh, but potentially appearing in some speakers as far north as Erie County, as far west as Youngstown ...
Colloquialism (also called colloquial language, everyday language, or general parlance) is the linguistic style used for casual (informal) communication. It is the most common functional style of speech, the idiom normally employed in conversation and other informal contexts. [1] Colloquialism is characterized by wide usage of interjections and ...
v. t. e. This is a list of British words not widely used in the United States. In Commonwealth of Nations, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Ireland, Canada, New Zealand, India, South Africa, and Australia, some of the British terms listed are used, although another usage is often preferred. Words with specific British English meanings that have ...
In sociolinguistics, a register is a variety of language used for a particular purpose or particular communicative situation. For example, when speaking officially or in a public setting, an English speaker may be more likely to follow prescriptive norms for formal usage than in a casual setting, for example, by pronouncing words ending in -ing with a velar nasal instead of an alveolar nasal ...
African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) may be considered a dialect, ethnolect or sociolect. [ 22 ] While it is clear that there is a strong historical relationship between AAVE and earlier Southern U.S. dialects, the origins of AAVE are still a matter of debate. The presiding theory among linguists is that AAVE has always been a dialect of ...
Slang. A slang is a vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in everyday conversation but avoided in formal writing. [1] It also often refers to the language exclusively used by the members of particular in-groups in order to establish group identity, exclude outsiders, or both.