henry (12/29/82)
Flammable/inflammable and valuable/invaluable actually are not very good examples of words that are identical in meaning to their negations. The flammable/inflammable pair is not really a positive/negative pair at all. The "in" is not a negative prefix but a carryover from the original word in (I think) French. The dropping of the "in" is a modern idea, for the benefit of ignoramuses who might guess "inflammable" to be a negation. A safety win, but a little nauseating. "Valuable" and "invaluable" do not mean the same thing at all; the latter is an emphatic form meaning "so valuable as to be beyond price".
wsp (01/03/83)
How about CLEAVE meaning to split apart and CLEAVE meaning to stick together? He will cleave the wood with his ax. His tongue cleft to the roof of his mouth. Peter Benson ittdcd-west