Etymologically
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conflagro

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Pronunciation

  • Classical: [ˈkõː.fɫa.ɡroː][1]
  • Ecclesiastical: [ˈkɔɱ.fla.ɡro][1]

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

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