20091029Word of the Day

junli

conflate

\kuhn-FLAYT\ , transitive verb;
1.To bring together; to fuse together; to join or meld.
2.To combine (as two readings of a text) into one whole.
及物动词 vt.
1.合并
2.异文合并

Quotes:
Scott Reynolds's creepy debut feature [film] conflates the present and the past with ingenious use of flashbacks.
~Anne Billson, "Bent beneath the weight of its own righteousness", Sunday Telegraph, March 1, 1998
Painting America as a drug-ridden society leads to bad policy -- as does the tendency in some quarters to conflate the various drug abuses into a single dreadful statistic.
~William Raspberry, "Not a Drug-Ridden Society", Washington Post, April 21, 2000
. . .lean and mobile military units that conflate the traditional categories of police officers, commandos, emergency-relief specialists, diplomats, and, of course, intelligence officers.
~Robert D. Kaplan, "The roles of the CIA and the military may merge", The Atlantic, February 1998

Origin:
Conflate is from Latin conflatus, past participle of conflare, "to blow together; to put together," from con-, "with, together" + flare, "to blow."