this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2025
3 points (71.4% liked)

English usage and grammar

412 readers
1 users here now

A community to discuss and ask questions about English usage and grammar.

If your post refers to a specific English variant, please indicate it within square brackets (for instance [Canadian]).

Online resources:

Sibling communities:

Rules of conduct:

The usual ones on Lemmy and Mastodon.. In short: be kind or at least respectful, no offensive language, no harassment, no spam.

(Icon: entry "English" in the Oxford English Dictionary, 1933. Banner: page from Chaucer's "The Wife of Bath's Tale".)

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Am I the only one that finds it weird that in English: "your disability got worse" and "your ability got worse" mean the same thing even though the words disability and ability effectively means the opposite thing, ie. Are antonyms.

top 5 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 days ago

No, actually. Because "worse" is an important word here. Not "increased/descreased" but "got worse".

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

“Ability” and”disability” aren’t opposites. The ability to climb stairs would be lost given the disability of having no legs.

My ability to climb stairs would get worse as I aged. My disability would get worse if I only had one leg and lost a second.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Also inflammable is NOT the opposite of flammable.

I’ll see myself out…

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Now flammable and inflammable...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago