“Conflagration.
City fire.
There were many beautiful buildings ruined in the conflagration of Troyes.
This article, dated 1690, taken from Furetière's Universal Dictionary, inevitably surprises readers of twenty-first century dictionaries.
Doesn't Le Petit Larousse 2020 indeed give a completely different definition of “Conflagration”, the one that is usual for us today: “Large-scale international conflict”?
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What is the origin of the word conflagration?
In fact, in his time, Furetière already confided that "this word has little use", this meaning corresponding, in truth, to its first use.
The fact remains that the Petit Larousse and the Petit Robert always remind us that initially, the conflagration did designate a fire.
Why a fire?
To understand, in fact, the origin of this first meaning of the word, which entered our French language in the 14th century, we must go back to its Latin source, the verb flagrare (to burn) quickly accompanied by a derivative, conflagratio,
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