Redminds of the German "umfahren" (run over) which is the exact opposit of "umfahren" (drive around). (First is pronounced with a tiny pause after the second letter; the other is not.)
You are able to undo the locking. It's almost like reading comprehension is shit nowadays.
Why can it not mean unable to be locked?
could be both
maybe it's a homonym
I'm pretty sure one of those has a hyphen
Depends on emphasis. Said with normal stress on the first syllable is "able to be unlocked".
But if you pronounce it with extra emphasis on both of the first two syllables with a bit of a pause between, I think most people would think "not able to be locked". Very context dependent though
Highly illockable
At the end, both are the same.
You end up with something that isn't locked.
I want my front door to be unlock-able, I don't want it to be un-lockable.
The first one isn't locked unless you unlock it.
Let me present to you a genre-classic from Germany:
umFAHREN -> to drive around something or somebody.
UMfahren -> to drive against something or somebody in a way it/they fall over.
It is the same in Dutch: omvaren can mean both sailing around and sailing over.
I would never use that word in either context, neither one is coherent. I would say, Picard, where is Beverly Crusher! She must shackle me, before I am overcome!
Unconceivable.
You keep saying that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
Unlock-able versus un-lockable
That's mental bracketing for you.
TIL the thing I do when I’m trying to understand an ambiguous sentence has a name

Unlockable ass-lock
Is that ass on lock for being unlockable, or is that lock ass for being unlockable?
Both. It is already been locked and therefore cannot be "locked"; simultaneously because it is locked, it is able to be unlocked.
Ahh, I've been speaking english for over a decade, and I still sometimes get caught up with these and say the opposite thing of what I want
Like the whole thing of flammable and inflammable meaning the same thing.. just why?
Also "off" meaning both off and on
The alarm went off (the alarm started) The light went off (the light suddenly stopped producing light)
Went off really just means everything :3. "Wow you really went off on that guy" = yelled at someone, "the milk went off" = spoiled, "we went off on an adventure" = left to travel and so on
I went off my head reading this
"flammable" actually has an interesting story:
Since 1980s use of the word, especially in safety warnings, has been sometimes discouraged lest it be misunderstood as "non-flammable" through confusion of the two prefixes in-.
Cuz the prefix "in-" can mean both "not" (as in invalid) and "to cause to be" (as in indebted)
But why?
Yes.
Romantic words were incorporated differently into other languages as the Roman Empire's influence spread. Words like inflammable have more direct Latin roots than words like indebt. So where Inflammable comes directy from the latin inflammo, indebt came from old French and middle English, going from something like endetter and endetten, using the root word dete and dette, but stemming from the root Latin word, debitum. Then en became in at some point.
That's how I understood it anyway through a very short amount of google searching. Anyone feel free to correct me.
In French you can say ininflammable
Also in Italian: infiammabile
Cause the verb is inflame and means to place a flame in on on something, as opposed to not flame. The problem being in both inflammable and the issue the OP of the image is the notion of re-bracketing. Rather than think of it as [inflame]able it gets converted into in[flammable] in the minds of new readers/listeners which flips the in- prefix meaning to not rather than in/on like it is supposed to be.
Should have been enflammable
Yes!
*None-lockable
For me, personally.. it means able to be unlocked. If I want to say the other thing, I say "it doesn't lock."
Nothing is unlockable with the right epoxy.
Or with enough epoxy.
When you say that something is easily unlockable the second way sounds clunky, but both convey the same message that whatever it is, it is not secure
to unambiguously say "unable to be locked" would be "nonlockable"
Nice shower thought.
It means it gives the illusion of being locked, until an Israeli tech company plugs into it and unlocks it for the cops.
/showerthoughts, no?
memes
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads/AI Slop
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live. We also consider AI slop to be spam in this community and is subject to removal.
A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
Sister communities
- !tenforward@lemmy.world : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world : Linux themed memes
- !comicstrips@lemmy.world : for those who love comic stories.