reconfide

English

Etymology

re- +‎ confide

Verb

reconfide (third-person singular simple present reconfides, present participle reconfiding, simple past and past participle reconfided)

1. To confide to someone new.
   1. To communicate information that was told in confidence to a third person.
      • 1857, Dinah Maria Mulock Craik, John Halifax, Gentleman, page 86:

        After this confidence, of which Muriel was very proud, and only condescended, upon gaining express permission, to reconfide it to me, she talked incessantly of the sister that was coming, until “little Maud”—the name she chose for her—became an absolute entity in the household.

      • 1911, Saki, The Chronicles of Clovis, →ISBN:

        '“I do not think,” Christine confided afterwards to a friend, who reconfided it to Bertie van Tahn, “that I shall ever be able to touch pâté de foie gras again.

      • 2016, Thomas Keneally, Bring Larks and Heroes, →ISBN:

        For Mrs Blythe had confided once to Ann, and Ann had ultimately reconfided to Halloran, the story of how her husband had walked disorderly with a domestic in Portsmouth.

   2. To entrust responsibility or authority to someone else.
      • 1893, Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the Fifty-Second Congress, Second Session:

        If you confide it to the Secretary of the Treasury, then why go on and reconfide the same power in the President?

      • 1898, Cosmopolitan - Volume 24, page 635:

        Is there any simple way by which the Speaker may be relieved of his now dangerous authority and the power reconfided to the representatives of the people ?

      • 1928, Benito Mussolini, My Autobiography, page 41:

        The insurrection in Milan in favor of war, the strong feelings of the same flavor in Rome, Padua, Genoa and Naples, decided His Majesty Victor Emmanuel III to exclude Giovanni Giolitti and to reconfide to Salandra, who had tendered his resignation, the task of reconstituting a new ministry.

Anagrams

• conifered