conformation

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin cōnfōrmātiō (“a symmetrical forming”),^[2][3][4][5] a noun of action from cōnfōrmō (“to shape, fashion”),^[2][3][6] itself formed from com- (“together”) and fōrmō (“to form”), from fōrma (“form”).^[3][6] The French word conformation dates from the 16th century,^[2] and Johnson took the English word as both French and Latin.^[7] It is the noun belonging to conform.^[8][9]

Earliest recorded meaning

The action of conforming or bringing into conformity; adaptation: 1511, according to the 1989 edition of the OED and Merriam-Webster Unabridged.^[10][4] Etymonline dates this sense to the 1510s and Dictionary.com to 1505–15,^[3][6] while the current OED's first quotation is from 1534, in J. Fewterer's translation of a work by U. Pinder.^[2]

Semantic evolution

From the action of shaping something to a pattern, the word passed in the early 17th century to the forming of a thing in all its parts (1615), and by 1646, in Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica, to the resulting structure, the way a thing is built from the arrangement of its parts.^[2][5] Johnson (1755) gives only this structural sense, defining the word as the form of things as they relate to each other and the disposition of the parts of a body, with the example that light of different colours is reflected "according to their different conformation".^[7] Later uses are technical: in historical linguistics, the assimilation of forms by analogy (1869, F. A. March), and in chemistry, each of the three-dimensional shapes a molecule can take and change between freely (1929).^[2] In stock breeding and judging the word is used of the build of an animal or of a dressed carcass.^[4]

Timeline

• 1511 – the action of conforming; adaptation.^[10][4] The current OED's first quotation is from 1534.^[2]
• 1615 – the symmetrical forming of a thing in all its parts, in H. Crooke's Mikrokosmographia.^[2]
• 1646 – structure; form as determined by the arrangement of parts.^[2]
• 1869 – in historical linguistics, the assimilation of forms by analogy.^[2]
• 1929 – in chemistry, one of the shapes a molecule can adopt and change between.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The shape or structure of something, as determined by the arrangement of its parts: the conformation of the river valley.^[11][4][2]
2. The outward form or build of an animal, as judged in breeding, or of a dressed carcass.^[4]
3. (chemistry) Any of the spatial arrangements a molecule can take by rotation about its single bonds, which can change into one another.^[11][4][2]
4. The act of conforming, or the state of being in agreement with a model or plan; adaptation.^[11][4][2]

Word family

• conformational
• conformationally

Related words

• conform
• conformity
• form
• formation

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ a b c Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
8. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins