conflate

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   To combine or mix together.

2. 2

   To fail to properly distinguish or keep separate (things)

   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.”
3. 3

   To deliberately draw a false equivalence or association, typically in a tacit or implicit…

   To deliberately draw a false equivalence or association, typically in a tacit or implicit manner as propaganda and/or an intentional distortion or misrepresentation of the subject matter.

   • But in reality, the order simply furthers the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies by continuing to conflate immigration issues with criminal ones.
   • But again, this conflates global geographic variation with race, says Alan Goodman, a biological anthropologist at Hampshire College.
   • Climate skeptics have conflated the two for years, for example, pointing to cold winter weather as proof that global warming is a hoax, most likely to play on people’s confusion about the two.
4. ›+ 2 more definitionsshow fewer

   1. 4

      Combining elements from multiple versions of the same text.

      • Why the redactor created this conflate version, despite its inconsistencies, is a matter of conjecture.
   2. 5

      A conflate text, one which conflates multiple version of a text together.

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