Word of the Week

kən-ˈflāt 

Last month I was watching Jeopardy and I totally thought I had the right answer for final Jeopardy but as it turns out, I was wrong. Apparently, what I had done was to confuse one building in Manhattan with another, incorrectly thinking that the Asch/Brown building was the Flatiron building. A fancy word for that phenomenon is to conflate two seemingly similar but different things.

Admittedly, I have only a cursory knowledge of Manhattan landmarks and their locations. So when the question (or as in the case of Jeopardy, the answer) was: Opened in 1902, it’s 87 feet in width on the 22nd Street side and less than 7 feet wide at its narrowest point on 23rd Street, I thought of the building that was the site of a terrible fire which caused the death of many garment workers in the early 1900s, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire occurred on March 25, 1911. Ironically, the Asch Building (as it was named then) was known for its “fireproof” rooms which had attracted garment manufacturers to base their production there. The building itself is not actually triangular in shape but is so named because it housed the Triangle Waist Company which produced shirtwaists (aka women’s blouses). Now known as the Brown Building, it is owned and in use by NYU.

On the other hand, located a little further uptown, the Flatiron Building is actually shaped like a triangle… so you can see how triangle-related ideas got jumbled in my brain! There is some controversy among language-use purists about how to use the word conflate. Originally, it meant to blend or combine things. An example of conflate being used in this manner would be: “the urban crisis conflates a number of different economic, political, and social issues.”

However, a shift occurred in the ‘70s and instead it came to be defined as failing to differentiate a thing from something similar or related or, alternatively, merging two or more sets of information, ideas or opinions into one (often in error). Currently it carries more of a negative connotation. An example of conflate being used in this manner would be: “It’s better to resist conflating the dramatic and very real effects of climate change we know about with extreme events we can’t be sure about.” (from Slate Magazine)

So next time you accidentally mistake one thing for another in conversation, just say, “Oh pardon me, I have conflated two different things. My bad!” (Or if you’re a word snob, use it in its original meaning)

Sneak peek hint for next week’s post: It’s a word I conflated with conflate. DJR