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''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 pleas      2
  • (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 ‎, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, page 59: ↩

  8. 2011 March 18, David Leavitt, “I Took the Turing Test”, in The New York Times ‎, →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 ‎, page 806: ↩

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

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