conflow

English

Etymology

con- +‎ flow. Calque of Latin cōnfluō, apparently coined by Philemon Holland in his translations of Suetonius and Ammianus Marcellinus.

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /kənˈfloʊ/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /kənˈfləʊ/
• Rhymes: -əʊ

Verb

conflow (third-person singular simple present conflows, present participle conflowing, simple past and past participle conflowed)

1. to flow together into one stream, to converge
   • 1609, Ammianus Marcellinus, trans. Philemon Holland, The Roman historie containing such acts and occurrents as passed under Constantius, Iulianus, Iovianus, Valentinianus, and Valens, emperours, book 23, chapter 2, page 221:

     The morrow next ensuing he departed from thence by the very edge of the river bankes, where the streame was big by occasion of other brookes conflowing thither on every side, marching in warlike sort with his forces armed and weaponed; and there he tooke up his station, and abode under tents: where the potentates and princes of the Saracenes humbly upon their knees presenting unto him a crowne of gold, honoured him as the Lord of the world, and of their nations; who were gladly received, as men meet for warlike brigandize and robberie.

   • 1878, Henry Morton Stanley, Through the Dark Continent: Or, The Sources of the Nile Around the Great Lakes of Equatorial Africa, and Down the Livingstone River to the Atlantic Ocean, volume 2, page 532:

     Crossed, soon after leaving camp, two small streams, then came to the Lukoke river, which, conflowing with the Meruzi, forms the northern Malagarazi.

   • 1907, Lillian G. Beekman, Outlines of Swedenborg’s Cosmology, pages 53–54:

     First and second substantials, the finites which constitute the two radiant belts below the Spiritual Sun, are framed immediately from the primitives of that Sun, by means of their own conflowing and conglobation.

   • 1911, Richard Wagner, “Letter 62a”, in William Ashton Ellis, transl., Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, page 111:

     You weave so deftly out of Nature, that all one needs is to have leant over your terrace with wits alert, to perceive whence you mould that fairy-world whose every strand of life so beautifully conflows.

   • 2007, C. J. Ackerly, S. E. Gontarski, The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett: A Reader’s Guide to His Works, Life, and Thought:

     He paces the islet, from where the river divides to where it reunifies, contemplating the “joyous eddies” created by the two arms conflowing.