English
conflate
Conflate comes from Latin cōnflātus ‘kindled’, and goes back to flō ‘breathe, blow’.
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEflō‘breathe, blow’
- Latin, derivedc. 75 BCE–200 CEcōnflō‘fuse, kindle, blow together’
- Latin, derivedc. 75 BCE–200 CEcōnflātus‘kindled’past passive participle of cōnflō
- Englishearliest quotation 1999conflate
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
Earlier history uncertain.
Lineage
- Latinc. 75 BCE–200 CEflō‘breathe, blow’
- Latin, derivedc. 75 BCE–200 CEcōnflō‘fuse, kindle, blow together’
- Latin, derivedc. 75 BCE–200 CEcōnflātus‘kindled’past passive participle of cōnflō
- Englishearliest quotation 1999conflate
Earliest quotation: 1999, Emanuel Tov: “Why the redactor created this conflate version, despite its…”
The story
Attested since 1541: from Latin cōnflātus, past passive participle of cōnflō (‘fuse, kindle, blow together’), see -ate (verb-forming suffix).
Linked words
through Proto-Indo-European *bʰleh₁-
blow, blast, bliss, bladder, flux, fluent, feeble, fluency, blithely, fluvial, blare, blasé, bleat, blather, 46 more
through Latin flō ‘breathe, blow’
Today it means
verb To combine or mix together.
Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.
Etymograph / Latin flō / conflate