conflagro

Forms

cōnflagrō (present infinitive cōnflagrāre, perfect active cōnflagrāvī, supine cōnflagrātum); first conjugation^[1]

Etymology

It is from Latin con- + flagrō (“to burn”).^[2][3][1] De Vaan takes flagrō as a verb made from an adjective ⟨*flagro-⟩ “burning”, from Proto-Italic *flagro- and Proto-Indo-European *bʰlg-ro- (“burning”); he compares Ancient Greek φλογμός (phlogmós, “flame”).^[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

The TLL finds it first in the Rhetorica ad Herennium and notes that poets avoid it entirely.^[3] Lewis & Short call it rare and mostly Ciceronian.^[5]

Semantic evolution

It is to be burnt down or consumed by fire: Cicero speaks of the city burning, and Livy has a man struck by lightning who burned with his house.^[2] Columella uses it of oxen's necks becoming inflamed.^[2] Figuratively it is to be utterly destroyed, as Cicero's laws that perished with all public right, and with an ablative to be consumed by hatred: Cicero asks whether a man does not think he will burn in a fire of ill will.^[2] Cicero also has a pun in the Verrines: on one night the praetor burned with a shameful love and the Roman fleet with the pirates' fire.^[2] Hyginus has a form with metathesis, ⟨confraglāvit⟩.^[2]

Timeline

• 81–43 BC – Cicero, of a city burning and of being consumed by hatred.^[2][5][6]
• 59 BC–17 AD – Livy, of a man burned with his house.^[2][6]
• 1st century AD – Columella, of inflamed necks.^[2][6]

Meanings

Verb

1. To be on fire, be burnt down, be consumed by fire.^[2][5][1]
2. To become inflamed.^[2]
3. (figurative) To be utterly destroyed or ruined.^[2][1]
4. (figurative) To be the object of hatred; to burn with passion.^[2][1]

Word family

• cōnflagrātiō

Related words

• dēflagrō
• flagrō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
4. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
5. ^ a b c Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de