conflagration

From Middle French, from Latin cōnflagrātiō (“burning, conflagration”).

• IPA^(key): /ˌkɒnfləˈɡɹeɪʃən/

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  Rhymes: -eɪʃən

conflagration (countable and uncountable, plural conflagrations)

1. A large fire extending to many objects, or over a large space; a general burning.

   Synonyms: firestorm, inferno

   It took sixty firefighters to put out the conflagration.

   • 1834 [1799], Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, “The Devil's Thoughts”, in The Poetical Works of S. T. Coleridge, volume II, London: W. Pickering, page 87:

     And back to hell his way did he take, / For the Devil thought by a slight mistake / It was general conflagration.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:conflagration.
2. (figuratively) A large-scale conflict.
   • 1919, Boris Sidis, The Source and Aim of Human Progress:

     This was well brought out in the skillfully conducted campaigns by the various governments in appealing to the masses with their characteristic suggestible subconsciousness, stirring to the very depths the reflex consciousness of gregarious man by all sorts of direct and indirect suggestions of fear of attacks and patriotic reactions of self-defence against such attacks until the evil genie of self-preservation and fear became loose, resulting in a sweeping conflagration of a war of nations with all the horror of diseases, mutilation, and extermination of millions of human lives, over seventeen and a half millions, according to latest accounts, having perished in this world-massacre of the human race.

3. (figuratively) A situation of great passion or emotion.
   • 1876, The New York Drama, volumes 1-2, page 1:

     I thought it only an amourette when you told me. It was a fire — a conflagration; subdue it.

Borrowed from Latin cōnflagrātiōnem.

• IPA^(key): /kɔ̃.fla.ɡʁa.sjɔ̃/

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conflagration f (plural conflagrations)

1. (literary) conflagration

• déflagration

• “conflagration”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.