Word of the Day

: January 27, 2014

conflate

verb kun-FLAYT

What It Means

1 a : to bring together : fuse

b : confuse

2 : to combine (as two readings of a text) into a composite whole

conflate in Context

The professor warned us to be careful not to conflate the two similar theories.

"Some people are bound to conflate your onscreen character Marie with your real-life self." - From an interview by Clark Collis in Entertainment Weekly, December 6, 2013

Did You Know?

We're not just blowing hot air when we tell you that "conflate" can actually be traced back to the same roots as the English verb "blow." "Conflate" derives from "conflatus," the past participle of the Latin verb "conflare" ("to blow together, to fuse"), which was formed by combining the prefix "com-" with the verb "flare," meaning "to blow." The source of Latin "flare" is the same ancient root word that gave us "blow." Other descendants of "flare" in English include "afflatus" ("a divine imparting of knowledge or power"), "inflate," "insufflation" ("an act of blowing"), and "flageolet" (a kind of small flute-the "flageolet" referring to a green kidney bean is unrelated).