Etymology is Not About Bugs

I came across a board game the other day that looked interesting. It's called MooT and it is a game about word origins (etymology) and meaning. Interesting if you are a word geek like me. For example, a question about what the word sibling means: you have the same mother but different fathers - are you siblings? It turns out that the dictionary says that siblings are children who have one or both parents in common, so the answer is yes. I would have thought that stepchildren would not be considered siblings. My bad.    

I probably have ten books on my shelves that have to do with words and their meanings, I suppose because the search for meaning is a little like solving a puzzle. I am always interested when groups get together to hear the regional differences in how we speak English. One word that popped up early on from my Mom (who grew up in upper western New York state) was what you call the direction across the middle of the intersection from you. She used the word catty-corner to mean diagonally. I have also heard kitty-corner used in Illinois that way. The actual English word is cater-corner, where cater is an Anglicized version of the French quatre meaning four. So cater-corner across meant across the four corners, or diagonally. Over the years it became catty-corner, and then kitty-corner.    

So how can flammable and inflammable both mean "can catch fire easily"? The original word was inflammable, where in- was used like en- in words like enflamed. But there was concern that people were thinking that the in- prefix meant "not", so back in the 1920's, the National Fire Protection Association began using the word flammable instead in its warnings. Once you get that figured out, you can decide whether we are going to bone or debone this chicken I bought for dinner. According to the dictionary, they mean the same thing also.