Other forms: confirmed, confirming, confirms
To confirm something is to say for certain that it is true, or that it is going ahead. The airline emails to confirm your seat; you ring the surgery to confirm Thursday at ten.
Confirm also means to back up what someone already suspected: the tests confirmed the diagnosis, the photographs confirmed his story. It sits comfortably with that — police confirmed that two people were hurt. The noun is confirmation, the thing that lands in your inbox after you book, and confirmed works as an adjective: a confirmed booking, a confirmed case, and a confirmed bachelor, meaning a man settled in his ways for good. In several churches, to be confirmed is to be accepted as a full member at a ceremony also called confirmation. Confirming is not agreeing: a hotel confirming your room is stating a fact, not giving its blessing.
1verbconfirmTo state that something is true or certain.~30%
“The airline confirmed that the flight had been cancelled.”
synonyms: verify
2verbarrangementTo make an arrangement definite and official.~29%
“Please confirm your appointment by Friday afternoon.”
3verbprovideTo provide evidence that supports something already suspected.~39%
“The X-ray confirmed the break in his wrist.”
4verbacceptTo accept someone as a full member of a church in a ceremony.~2%
“She was confirmed at the cathedral in the spring.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 10 sentences found in the wild and placed 10 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
The Latin verb confirmō meant to make firm, to strengthen, to establish, built from con-, together, and firmus, firm. It travelled through Old French confermer into Middle English confirmen. Firm is still sitting inside the word: when you confirm a booking you are firming it up.
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰer-
Latin
confirmo — to make firm, strengthen, establish
Old French
confermer
Middle English
confirmen
English, today
confirm
Built from
From Middle English confirmen, confermen, from Old French confermer, from Latin confirmo (“to make firm, strengthen, establish”), from con- (“together”) + firmo (“to make firm”), from firmus (“firm”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA