What is the 'it'?

The blog of the book

What is this sh*t?

I recently had occasion to consider the difference between “sewerage” and “sewage”.

I had never consciously turned my mind to this before. I had been inclined to think that, like “flammable” and “inflammable”, they were two ways of referring to the same thing. Or that they were variant spellings; maybe, for example, one was American English and one was English English.

Not so.

“Sewerage” is the series of pipes etc through which human waste is removed from the immediate vicinity of your house.

“Sewage” is what those pipes are removing.

In other words, what was seeping out from the underside of our old house in Melbourne in the 1990s wasn’t “raw sewerage”; it was raw sewage. (Whatever it was, it did make for a bumper crop of self-sown tomatoes. Shame about the smell though.)

It also means that the person who wrote this recent ABC News article had the distinction absolutely right. Unfortunately, they were let down by whoever wrote the three dot points at the top of the article. Your taxes at work.

Stan's avatar

Posted by:

Stan

2 responses to “What is this sh*t?”

  1. Archon's Den Avatar
    Archon’s Den

    Flammable, and inflammable are not exactly the same thing. There is a significant difference of degree – of speed, and intensity. A block of wood is flammable. An open pail of gasoline (petrol) is inflammable!! 😮

    Like

    Reply
  2. Stan Avatar
    Stan

    Thank you for engaging! What you say makes a good amount of sense. However, it isn’t supported by either the online Oxford or by Fowler, both of which say “flammable” equals “inflammable”. Interestingly, though, if I understand them correctly, where they both end up is with “flammable” being recently revived in order to avoid the possible (and perfectly understandable) confusion of the “in” of “inflammable” working the same way as most “in” prefixes (“inoperative”, “inapplicable”) as meaning “not”. Nobody wants to be around someone who misunderstands “inflammable” as meaning “not flammable at all”. Boom!

    Like

    Reply

Leave a comment