''confederate'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260331180822-00-⌔

confederate - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

confederate (comparative more confederate, superlative most confederate)

• Of, relating to, or united in a confederacy
• Banded together; allied.
  • ✤ All the swords/In Italy, and her confederate arms,/Could not have made this peace.¹
  • ✤ Hour after hour, remote from the world’s throng,
    Work, contest, fame, all life’s confederate pleas²
• (obsolete or archaic, as a participle) Confederated.
  • ✤ Remember as thou read’ſt, thy promiſe paſt:
    I do repent me, reade not my name there,
    My heart is not confederate with my hand.³
  • ✤ And it was told the house of Dauid, saying, Syria is confederate with Ephraim: and his heart was moued, and the heart of his people as the trees of the wood are mooued with the wind.⁴

Noun

confederate (plural confederates)

• A member of a confederacy.
  • ✤ Synonym: ally
• An accomplice in a plot.
  • ✤ Synonym: conspirator
  • ✤ By’th’vvay, vve met my vvife, her ſiſter, and a rabble more
    Of vilde confederates: […]⁵
  • ✤ He found some of his confederates in gaol.⁶
  • ✤ These are replete with references to […] slaves who typically absconded in well-organized groups, often with a light-skinned confederate who posed as their owner until they reached freedom.⁷
  • (psychology) An actor who participates in a psychological experiment pretending to be a subject but in actuality working for the researcher.
    • ✤ Synonym: stooge
    • ✤ So how do you win the imitation game? “Just be yourself,” a past confederate advises Christian. But what does it mean to “be yourself”?⁸

Verb

confederate (third-person singular simple present confederates, present participle confederating, simple past and past participle confederated)

• (ambitransitive) To unite persons or states in a league, confederacy or conspiracy; to ally, league.
  • ✤ With them the gods were confederated to break barbarian arrogance.⁹
  • ✤ All persons who conspire confederate and agree to murder any person whether a subject of Her Majesty or not and whether within the Queen’s dominions or not, […] shall be guilty of a misdemeanour, and shall be liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than ten years.¹⁰

Etymology 1

First attested in 1387, in Middle english; inherited from Middle English confederat(e) (“confederated, allied, associated in a plot; united or bound, as in friendship or troth”),¹¹ borrowed from Late Latin cōnfoederātus perfect passive participle of cōnfoederō, see -ate (adjective-forming suffix) and -ate (noun-forming suffix). Regular participial usage of the adjective up until Early Modern English. By surface analysis, con- +‎ federate.

Pronunciation

• IPA: /kənˈfɛdəɹət/
• Audio (US): 🔊
• Audio (Southern England): 🔊

Etymology 2

First attested in 1531; borrowed from Late Latin cōnfoederātus, see -ate (verb-forming suffix) and Etymology 1 for more. Doublet of (obsolete) confeder.

Pronunciation

• IPA: /kənˈfɛdəɹeɪt/
• Audio (Southern England): 🔊

Printed 2026-06-28.

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Footnotes

1. c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene iii]: ↩

2. , Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Youth’s Antiphony, lines 11-12: ↩

3. 1595 December 9 (first known performance), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Richard the Second”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene iii], page 43, column 1: ↩

4. 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Isaiah 7:2: ↩

5. c. 1594 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Comedie of Errors”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i], page 98, column 2: ↩

6. 1849–1861, Thomas Babington Macaulay, chapter XXI, in The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC: ↩

7. 2008, Harriet A. Washington, “Southern Discomfort”, in Medical Apartheid ‎${}^{[1]}$, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, page 59: ↩

8. 2011 March 18, David Leavitt, “I Took the Turing Test”, in The New York Times ‎${}^{[2]}$, →ISSN: ↩

9. 1924, Herbert Weir Smyth, “III. The Persians”, in Aeschylean Tragedy, page 89: ↩

10. 1958, Parliament of Victoria, “Part I, Division 1, section 4”, in Crimes Act 1958 ‎${}^{[3]}$, page 806: ↩

11. “confederat”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007. ↩