Word.ws English Dictionary

confer

/kənˈfɜː/US/kənˈfɜɹ/

confer verb: to grant as a possession; to bestow.

Verb

confer (third-person singular simple present confers, present participle conferring, simple past and past participle conferred)

  1. (transitive) To grant as a possession; to bestow.
    • The college has conferred an honorary degree upon the visiting Prime Minister.
    • Nor shall I count in hainous to enjoy
      The public marks of honour and reward
      Conferr'd upon me[…]1671, John Milton, Samson Agonistes
    Synonyms:
    afford
  2. (intransitive) To talk together, to consult, discuss; to collogue.
    • They were in a huddle, conferring about something.
    • Local buttons popped when Henry Kissinger visited Little Rock last month to confer with Fulbright on the Middle East oil talks.1974 March 25, “A Traveler's Perils”, in Time
    Synonyms:
    palaver
  3. (obsolete) To compare.
    • The Newe Testament ... Conferred diligently with the Greke, and best approued translations.1557 (book title)
    • Confer thine estate with others […]. Be content and rest satisfied, for thou art well in respect to others […].1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition II...
  4. (obsolete, transitive) To bring together; to collect, gather.
  5. (obsolete) To contribute; to conduce.
    • The closeness and compactness of the parts resting together doth much confer to the strength of the union.1665, Joseph Glanvill, Scepsis Scientifica

Proper noun capitalized: Confer

Confer (plural Confers)

  1. A surname.

confer meaning in Tamil, Urdu, Bengali and Malayalam

confer in Tamil

அளி, கலந்தாய், கூடி ஆலோசனை செய், வழங்குறு

confer in Urdu

عطا کرنا, دینا

confer in Bengali

খেতাব প্রদান করা, আলোচনা করা

confer in Malayalam

നല്കുക, ഒത്തു നോക്കുക, ദാനം ചെയ്യുക, കൊടുക്കുക, ഉപമിക്കുക
More languagesFewer languages
confer in Kannada
ಬೀರು bīru
confer in Sanskrit
यु yu, युज् yuj
confer in Arabic
أَفْضَلَ ʔafḍala, مَنَحَ manaḥa, تَآمَرَ taʔāmara

Examples of confer in a sentence

  • Abel tried to refuse the honor thus unexpectedly conferred upon him, but it was no use.1850, T. S. Arthur, “Deacon Smith and his Violin”, in Sketches of Life and Character, Philadelphia: J. W. Bradley, →OCLC, page 76:
  • The special immunities that are conferred on MPs were framed with the essential purpose of allowing them to speak freely in parliament.2010 February 7, Andrew Rawnsley, The Observer:
  • The mere existence of a dictionary of a certain variety of English does not automatically confer acceptance of that variety.2014, James Lambert, “Diachronic stability in Indian English lexis”, in World Englishes, page 114:
  • If we confer these observations with others of the like nature, we may find cause to rectify the general opinion.1661, Robert Boyle, The Second Essay, of Unsucceeding Experiments:

All 40 example sentences with confer

Synonyms of confer

Forms of confer

Verb
third-person singular presentconfers
present participleconferring
past participleconferred
pastconferred
Proper noun
pluralConfers

Past tense of confer: conferred

Origin of 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. Doublet of collate. See also infer, relate and refer, delate and defer, as well as prelate and prefer among others.

Words formed from confer

Words that rhyme with confer

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about confer

What does confer mean?
Confer means to grant as a possession; to bestow.
What is confer in Tamil?
Confer in Tamil is அளி, கலந்தாய், கூடி ஆலோசனை செய். See Confer meaning in Tamil.
How do you use confer in a sentence?
Abel tried to refuse the honor thus unexpectedly conferred upon him, but it was no use.
What part of speech is confer?
Confer can be a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce confer?
Confer is pronounced /kənˈfɜː/ (UK).
What is the past tense of confer?
The past tense of confer is conferred.

Words near confer in the dictionary

  1. confedered
  2. confedering
  3. confeders
  4. confelicity
  5. confen
  6. confer
  7. conferable
  8. conferee
  9. conferees
  10. conference
  11. conference bike

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: confer (page history and authors); Confer (page history and authors); confer (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); confer (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); confer (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); confer (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ಬೀರು (Kannada) (page history and authors); यु (Sanskrit) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Mélange a trois-confer.wav.

Cite this entry: “confer.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/confer. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.