Other forms: conferred, confers, conferring
Confer is what people do when they step aside and talk something over before deciding. Two lawyers muttering at the front of a courtroom; a referee waving the other officials across the pitch; your manager saying she needs to confer with the team and will come back to you.
The other half of confer is giving. A university confers a degree, a monarch confers a knighthood, a contract confers a right — and that half takes ON or UPON: the honour is conferred on someone. The talking half takes WITH: you confer with a colleague, never to a colleague. Keep the two prepositions straight and the grammar itself tells your reader which meaning you want. The noun is conference, which is a great many people conferring in a hotel. In footnotes you also meet cf., short for the Latin confer, telling you to compare something else.
1verbconferTo discuss something with other people before making a decision.
“The judge asked the lawyers to confer before the hearing continued.”
synonyms: consult, deliberate
2verbbestowTo formally give someone a degree, honour, title, or right.
“The university conferred an honorary doctorate on the retired surgeon.”
Also accepted in games: consult
Confer walked into English from Middle French conférer, and before that Old French conferer, all from Latin cōnferō — the con- of together bolted onto the ancient root for carrying and bearing. That same carrying root gives infer, refer, defer and prefer, which is why they all rhyme and all move something somewhere. Confer is also a doublet of collate: two words, one Latin ancestor, arriving by different roads.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰer-
Latin
cōnferō
Old French
conferer
Middle French
conférer
English, today
confer
From Early Modern English conferre, from Middle French conférer, from Old French conferer, from Latin cōnferō. Compare Dutch confereren, German konferieren, Danish konferere, Swedish konferera. a doublet of collate. See also infer, relate and refer, delate and defer, as well as prelate and prefer among others.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA