Confederate

How to spell confederate

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce confederate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does confederate mean?

1. nounA person who is an ally, associate, or accomplice, especially one helping in a scheme.
2. adjectiveUnited in a league or alliance by a formal agreement.
3. verbTo unite or band together in an alliance or for a common purpose.

Confederate in a sentence

• noun

  The detective suspected the cashier was a confederate in the robbery.

• adjective

  The confederate states agreed to share defence costs under the treaty.

• verb

  The smaller firms decided to confederate in order to compete with the giants.

• noun

  Every magician relies on a hidden confederate planted in the audience.

• adjective

  A loose confederate structure left each region in charge of its own taxes.

• verb

  Rival unions chose to confederate and negotiate as a single bloc.

Where does confederate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb confoederare, meaning 'to join together by a treaty', which was built from con- 'together' and the noun foedus (stem foeder-), meaning a 'league', 'treaty', or 'covenant'. That same foedus root underlies the modern words 'federal' and 'federation', so the family connection is a useful memory aid: a confederate is literally a partner bound by a shared pact. English picked the term up in the late 1300s, originally through the past participle confoederatus, to describe allies or states joined in a league. Over time it broadened to mean any accomplice or associate, including the sharper sense of a partner in a scheme or crime. In the United States it later took on a specific historical meaning when capitalised, referring to the states that formed a league in the 1860s, but the everyday lowercase word still simply means an ally or accomplice.

How the word is built

• con- (together)
• feder- (from Latin foedus, foederis: league, treaty, covenant)
• -ate (adjective/noun/verb suffix)