can not be explained And can not be explained both mean “inexplicable,” but inexplicable also often implies that something cannot be explained or explained.
One of the fascinating features of adjectives in English is that we have a lot of adjectives that are synonyms but are used differently. It’s hard to describe the difference in meaning between reliable And reliable, for example, but we use them differently. We also want to accumulate them: what other language might require so many words to mean “big” (big, huge, great, huge, colossal, colossal, colossal)?
Pair of adjectives that match inexplicable And can not be explained is an interesting case. Many such synonym pairs include a word derived from Latin and a word derived from Old English, such as feasible/can be done, so muchAnd friendly / friendly. But inexplicable And can not be explained both are of Latin origin and compete for the same lexical space.
We will get to the bottom of it.
‘Explain’: to clarify
First, their respective history: the verbs explain And explain imported English from Latin within a century in the late 1400s and early 1500s. Both present an image or metaphor as their basic meaning: explainfrom Latin plan (“flat”) literally means “flattening,” “flattening,” or (big surprise) “flattening.” The “obvious” or “conspicuous” meaning of simple come from the same root; also planemeans “a flat or level surface” or tool that makes wood flat and level.
‘Explicate’: open
explainfrom Latin origin explain, literally “to open up”, a good glossary to say “to make something clear or understandable” or “to indicate the reason or cause of something”. The same root gives us words like complicit, covert, And clear. If explain means “to unfold” (“fold out”), then complicated means “folded together”, another suitable figurative use for this meaning. You can also see class in these words; Its meanings include “bend, fold” as a verb or “layer, fold” as a noun, as Plywood.
‘Explainable’ and ‘Explainable’
Both verbs form adjectives in a predictable way—explainable, explainable—forms were found in print about a century after the verbs were first used. What’s harder to explain is that, for some reason, both these adjectives and their predictable negations—can not be explained And inexplicable—shows wildly different usage patterns from the verbs from which they are derived. To begin with, the verb explain much more commonly used than the verb explain; the latter has a clear Latin spelling that probably contributed to a more technical, scholarly, and specialized use: you explain baseball, but you explain Scripture.
The more radical naturalized (i.e., Anglicized) nature of explain maybe that’s why explainable denied German cancel- while explainable use of Latin root IN-Synonymous prefixes however provide clues as to the origin and usage of these terms.
Which is used more?
But while the verb explain used more often than explainadjectives explainable And inexplicable more often explainable And can not be explained. There is perhaps no logical reason for this strange crossover of lexical preferences, other than the greater analytical connotation that accompanies the use of one adjective modifying another (“an impossible outcome”). explainable”) versus pragmatic verb use (“explain how these work”). By adding a modifier, we are giving a more technical dimension to the subject. his words.
The strange thing is that the negative forms are used much more often than their positive analogues. can not be explained is the most common of these forms; Looking at the billion-word Corpus of contemporary American English gives us the following comparative ratios:
explainable (218)
explainable (270)
inexplicable (446)
inexplicable (2080)
can not be explained join some negative adjectives that are much more common than their positive equivalents. Words like that, like inexplicable, irreconcilable, inseparable, irrevocableAnd fathomlessproves that English speakers sometimes like to emphasize sounds.
Why this is true, however, we cannot explain.
Categories: Usage Notes
Source: vothisaucamau.edu.vn
