Other forms: confides, confided, confiding
To confide is to trust somebody with a secret. Confide in her, confided that he was leaving, nobody to confide in.
The preposition is in for the person: confide in a friend. Confide something to somebody is the fuller construction. Having nobody to confide in is a standard measure of loneliness in research. Note confidant and confidante, the person confided in, spelled with an a and not to be confused with confident; and that confide, confidence and confidential all come from the same Latin verb about trusting.
1verbconfideTo trust somebody with a secret.
“She confided in her best friend that she was thinking of leaving her job.”
confide is a trusting with a secret.
Latin confidere is con-, thoroughly, plus fidere, to trust — the same fides as in fidelity and faith. Confiding in somebody is trusting them completely, which is exactly the claim.
Proto-Indo-European
*bʰeydʰ-
Latin
confīdō — to put trust in, have confidence in
gmw-msc
confide
English, today
confide
Built from
From gmw-msc confide, confyde (“to put trust in”), from Latin confīdō (“to put trust in, have confidence in”), from con- (“together”) + fīdō (“to trust”). First attested in English use in the early 17th century. a doublet of faith and fidelity.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA