In the last few months, I have heard a word on TV that I don't think I've heard before -- "conflate."
Maybe I hadn't been paying close enough attention, but I think more likely it's a word that someone used on some popular TV show, some other TV writers heard it and wrote it into their own scripts. Although one dictionary I checked didn't list it, I googled the word and found definitions.
It's used a lot as 'confuse,' in that negative sense - You shouldn't conflate those two issues! Though I am not sure usages like that are 'legit.'
RobertB said
It's used a lot as 'confuse,' in that negative sense - You shouldn't conflate those two issues! Though I am not sure usages like that are 'legit.'
When I googled it, "combine (two or more texts, ideas, etc.) into one." Not clear whether they meant as "confuse" or "combine." Anyway, I don't think I heard "conflate" before last year.
torpeau said
In the last few months, I have heard a word on TV that I don't think I've heard before -- "conflate."
The OxED has:
Etymology: < Latin confl?t-, participial stem of confl?re to blow together, stir up, raise, accomplish; also to melt together, melt down (metals); < con- + fl?re to blow: see flate n.
1. trans. To blow or fuse together; to bring together and make up from various sources or various elements; to compose, put together; produce, bring about. Now rare.
1583 P. Barrough Methode of Phisicke v. xxv. 268 Galene..calleth it a tumour conflated of a melancholious humour.
1633 T. Adams Comm. 2 Peter (ii. 1) 408 Thy pestilent and stinking sinnes have conflated the plague wherewith I strike thee.
1654 R. Vilvain tr. Enchiridium Epigr. i. 38 Our Mother Eve was of his Rib conflated.
1822 Blackwood's Edinb. Mag. 12 16 Commentaries conflated for the benefit of mankind.
1837 T. Carlyle French Revol. I. v. i. 213 The States General, created and conflated by the passionate effort of the whole Nation.
†2. To fuse, melt down (metal). Obs.
1664 Floddan Field ii. 12 The tillmen tough their Teams could take And to hard harness them conflate.3. To combine or fuse two variant readings of a text into a composite reading; to form a composite reading or text by such fusion.
1885 J. R. Harris in Amer. Jrnl. Philol. VI. 31 The two readings [??????? and ?????] are undoubtedly early, since they are conflated in Cod. D into ??????? ?????.
1927 A. H. McNeile Introd. N.T. 61 The custom of the former [sc. Matthew] was to conflate the language of his sources when they overlapped.
#3 may have been extended from text to ideas, but the references are 100+ years old.
"Conflate" may go back over a hundred years, but it surely seems like its usage has only become more common in the last year or so.