conflate

Etymology

Attested since 1541: borrowed from Latin cōnflātus, from cōnflō (“fuse, melt, or blow together”); cōn (“with, together”) + flō (“blow”).

verb

  1. To bring (things) together and fuse (them) into a single entity.
  2. To mix together different elements.
  3. (by extension) To fail to properly distinguish or keep separate (things); to mistakenly treat (them) as equivalent.
    “Bacon was Lord Chancellor of England and the first European to experiment with gunpowder.” — “No, you are conflating Francis Bacon and Roger Bacon.”

adj

  1. (biblical criticism) Combining elements from multiple versions of the same text.
    Why the redactor created this conflate version, despite its inconsistencies, is a matter of conjecture. 1999, Emanuel Tov, The Greek and Hebrew Bible: Collected Essays on the Septuagint

noun

  1. (biblical criticism) A conflate text, one which conflates multiple version of a text together.

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