confer
Formsconfers, conferring, conferred
- 1To grant or bestow something on a person, such as a right, honor, or title.
The board voted to confer emeritus status on the retiring professor.
The monarch conferred a knighthood on the celebrated scientist.
Similarafford
Oppositerevoke, withhold, withdraw
Note
The ceremonial sense has a fixed shape. The thing given is the object, and the receiver follows on or upon: an honorary degree conferred upon a Prime Minister, immunities conferred on MPs. It sits comfortably in the passive, as in Milton's "Conferr'd upon me" in Samson Agonistes (1671). The word reached English through French from Latin cōnferō, and it belongs to the same family as refer, defer, infer and prefer.
- 2To talk things over with one or more people; to consult or discuss together.
The lawyers asked to confer privately before the hearing resumed.
Members of the jury conferred for several hours before reaching a verdict.
Similarconsult, deliberate, talk, huddle
Note
Here the word takes no object. People confer with one another, and the topic follows on or about: Time reported in 1974 that Henry Kissinger came to Little Rock "to confer with Fulbright on the Middle East oil talks." That shape is what separates it from the bestowing sense. You confer with a person, but you confer an honor on one.
- 3To examine things together in order to compare them.
He bade his clerk confer the two manuscripts for discrepancies.
The Newe Testament ... Conferred diligently with the Greke, and best approued translations.
1557Note
Old scholarship used it for laying one thing beside another. Robert Burton urges "Confer thine estate with others" (1624), and Robert Boyle would "confer these observations with others" (1661). The pattern is confer A with B, which a modern reader can mistake for the consulting sense. In these texts nothing is discussed, only compared. The meaning lives on in the abbreviation cf., Latin confer, "compare."
Less common meanings
- 4To bring things together; to collect or gather into one group.
Note
The literal meaning lies beneath the whole family: Latin conferre is "to bring together," and this sense kept that physical gathering of scattered things into one place. It is long obsolete, so a modern reader will hear the bestowing sense in "confer the supplies." In older texts, read it as collect.
- 5To contribute to or help produce a particular result.
The closeness and compactness of the parts resting together doth much confer to the strength of the union.
1665, Joseph Glanvill, Scepsis ScientificaNote
Its mark is the preposition to followed by a result. Joseph Glanvill's Scepsis Scientifica (1665) says compactness "doth much confer to the strength of the union." The preposition tells the senses apart: in older prose, confer to means "help bring about," while confer on or upon is the bestowing sense that survived. Its nearest synonym is conduce. In modern writing, use contribute instead.
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Origin
This word came into Early Modern English from Middle French "conférer," which goes back through Old French to the Latin "cōnferō." It is a doublet of "collate."