conflagration

UK/ˌkɒnfləˈɡɹeɪʃən/US/ˌkɒnfləˈɡɹeɪʃən/

nounC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,864 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: conflagrations

A conflagration is a huge destructive blaze. A city-wide conflagration.

It is used of fires large enough to change a place permanently. A conflagration is also a figure for a war spreading beyond where it started.

Definitions of conflagration

1nounconflagrationA huge destructive blaze.C2
“The conflagration took four streets and stopped at the river.”

conflagration is a fire.

Where it comes from

Latin conflagratio comes from conflagrare, to burn up, from com plus flagrare, to blaze.

Latin
cōnflagrātiō
English, today
conflagration

Borrowed from Middle French -, from Latin cōnflagrātiō. From Middle French -, from Latin cōnflagrātiō (“burning, conflagration”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

conflagration in the wild

A long period of hot, dry, windy conditions, and the wooden construction prevalent in the city, led to the conflagration spreading quickly.
Great Chicago Fire
One of the goals of fire prevention is to avoid conflagrations.
Conflagration
When a conflagration is extinguished, there is often a fire investigation to determine the cause of the fire.
Conflagration
The royal dynasty ruling Bahlam Jol lasted another century after the conflagration, and traces of farming around the city continued for several more centuries after that.
Witzna
The Changsha fire of 1938, also known as Wenxi fire, was the greatest human-caused urban conflagration in Chinese history.
1938 Changsha fire

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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