Why would unlockable mean able to be unlocked?
this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2026
665 points (98.4% liked)
memes
22435 readers
3046 users here now
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.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Yes
Now I'm trying to think of a circumstance where something can be unlocked but not relocked. Like in a game you can just make a new account and achievements are relocked.
Yes.
It means it gives the illusion of being locked, until an Israeli tech company plugs into it and unlocks it for the cops.
For me, personally.. it means able to be unlocked. If I want to say the other thing, I say "it doesn't lock."
I'm pretty sure one of those has a hyphen
You are able to undo the locking. It's almost like reading comprehension is shit nowadays.
load more comments
(3 replies)
*None-lockable
Nothing is unlockable with the right epoxy.
Or with enough epoxy.
I don't think I've ever used the word "unlockable".
"The closet doors in my house don't have locks", is probably what I'd say.
I've only ever seen it used for video games where there's content that you can unlock through some achievement or feat or something.
So how do you call these types of character?
@The_Picard_Maneuver You know we are... every rule gets a 'but maybe', 'except for when', 'never mind, nothing means what you think and everything means something AND nothing at all but also whatever you want it to mean.'
Back in like 1st or 2nd grade the teacher introduced us to context clues for reading comprehension.
Unlockable = can’t be locked
Unopenable = can’t be opened
Awe that's cute, trying to apply consistency across English words
It's not about openability, it's about lockability. A container could unopenable without being lockable.
I would say "un" implies a reversal of some state. More clear would be "not lockable", so most people would use this. Unlockable is much more likely to mean able to reverse the state of being locked.
Can we discern via stress?
UNlockable - can be opened.
unLOCKable - cannot be locked
Locks should always be able to be reversed. Locking something is restricting access, not denying it entirely. You don't weld a door shut and call it locked.
Poe didn't write a tale about Fortunato being locked downstairs.
"Sealed", "buried", "entombed", "immured" - all perfectly good terms for closing access to something with the intent of the closure being permanent.
Depends on the cawntex
Yep. Language can be funny like that. You are either modifying the adjective "lockable" with the prefix "un-", or you are modifying the verb "unlock" into an adjective by adding "-able" at the end. Words can have multiple definitions, yay!
Both definitions refer to the same thing, right? A locked lock is unlockable. It cannot be locked further, AND it can be unlocked.
Vice versa for the unlocked lock.
both, but not at the same time. words change meaning with context. thats why there often are several definitions of a single word.