conflagration

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin cōnflagrātiō (“a burning”),^[2][3][4][5] and the OED compares French conflagration, of the 16th century.^[3] Etymonline allows either source,^[6] and Barnhart and Klein take the word through French.^[7][8] The Latin noun comes from cōnflagrō (“to burn up”),^[2][3][6] formed from com-, here perhaps intensive,^[6][9] and flagrō (“to burn, blaze, glow”),^[6][9] from Proto-Indo-European *bhel- (“to shine, flash, burn”).^[6] The Latin verb is akin to fulgur (“lightning”) and flamma (“flame”),^[10][9] and the source of flagrant.^[4][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

The burning up of something in a destructive fire: 1555, in R. Eden's translation of Peter Martyr, Of Pole Antartike.^[3][7][5] The Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English date the word to the late 15th century, and Etymonline to the 1550s.^[11][12][6]

Semantic evolution

The word first named the act of burning; in Blount's Glossographia (1656) it also named the great fire itself, as of a town or forest.^[3][6] Johnson (1755) gave "a general fire spreading over a large space" and added that it was generally taken for the fire that would consume the world at the end of things;^[13] Hobbes had written of "the Conflagration of the present world".^[11] A medical use, for severe inflammation or high fever, ran from 1681, in a table of hard words, to 1823.^[3][5] The figurative use dates from 1702, in Clarendon,^[3] and Merriam-Webster notes that it can mean war in particular.^[5] The older sense of burning up is recorded until 1872.^[3]

Timeline

• 1555 – the burning up of something by fire (obsolete by 1872).^[3][7][5]
• 1656 – a great and destructive fire.^[3] Etymonline dates this use to the 1650s.^[6]
• 1681 – severe inflammation, high fever (obsolete by 1823).^[3]
• 1702 – figurative, in Clarendon's History of the Rebellion.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. A large and destructive fire, especially one that burns many buildings or a wide area: The conflagration destroyed half the port.^[9][5][3]
2. Something like such a fire, especially a war.^[5][3]
3. (obsolete, 1555–1872) The burning up of something; consumption by fire.^[5][3][11]
4. (obsolete, 1681–1823) Severe inflammation or fever.^[5][3]

Word family

• conflagrative

Related words

• conflagrate
• conflagrant
• flagrant
• flame
• phlox

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
8. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
10. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
11. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
13. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.