conflagration
English
WOTD – 8 April 2006
Etymology
Etymology tree
From Middle French, from Latin cōnflagrātiō (“burning, conflagration”).
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˌkɒnfləˈɡɹeɪʃən/
Audio (US): (file) - Rhymes: -eɪʃən
Noun
conflagration (countable and uncountable, plural conflagrations)
- A large fire extending to many objects, or over a large space; a general burning.
- 1834 [1799], Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, “The Devil's Thoughts”, in The Poetical Works of S. T. Coleridge, volume II, London: W. Pickering, page 87:
- And back to hell his way did he take, / For the Devil thought by a slight mistake / It was general conflagration.
- For more quotations using this term, see Citations:conflagration.
- (figuratively) A large-scale conflict.
- 1919, Boris Sidis, The Source and Aim of Human Progress:
- This was well brought out in the skillfully conducted campaigns by the various governments in appealing to the masses with their characteristic suggestible subconsciousness, stirring to the very depths the reflex consciousness of gregarious man by all sorts of direct and indirect suggestions of fear of attacks and patriotic reactions of self-defence against such attacks until the evil genie of self-preservation and fear became loose, resulting in a sweeping conflagration of a war of nations with all the horror of diseases, mutilation, and extermination of millions of human lives, over seventeen and a half millions, according to latest accounts, having perished in this world-massacre of the human race.
- (figuratively) A situation of great passion or emotion.
- 1876, The New York Drama, volumes 1-2, page 1:
- I thought it only an amourette when you told me. It was a fire — a conflagration; subdue it.
- 1955 September 15, Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, Paris: The Olympia Press […], →OCLC:
- Nobody met me at the toy station where I alighted with my new expensive bag, and nobody answered the telephone; eventually, however, a distraught McCoo in wet clothes turned up at the only hotel of green-and-pink Ramsdale with the news that his house had just burned down - possibly, owing to the synchronous conflagration that had been raging all night in my veins.
Derived terms
Translations
a large, ferocious, and destructive fire
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a large-scale conflict
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See also
French
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Latin cōnflagrātiō.
Pronunciation
Noun
conflagration f (plural conflagrations)
- (literary) conflagration
See also
Further reading
- “conflagration”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012
Categories:
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *bʰel- (shiny)
- English terms borrowed from Middle French
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European word *ḱe
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English terms derived from Proto-Italic
- English terms derived from Middle French
- English terms derived from Latin
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European word *ḱóm
- English 4-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio pronunciation
- Rhymes:English/eɪʃən
- Rhymes:English/eɪʃən/4 syllables
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English uncountable nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with usage examples
- English terms with quotations
- en:Fire
- French terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European word *ḱóm
- French terms derived from Latin
- French terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- French terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *bʰel- (shiny)
- French terms derived from Proto-Italic
- French terms borrowed from Latin
- French terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European word *ḱe
- French learned borrowings from Latin
- French 4-syllable words
- French terms with IPA pronunciation
- French terms with audio pronunciation
- French lemmas
- French nouns
- French countable nouns
- French feminine nouns
- French literary terms