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confer
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
confer
verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
also
▪ All Henley postgraduate students are registered at Brunel University which also confers the degree.
▪ The Schedule also confers a right of appeal on an unsuccessful applicant or objector to the sheriff.
▪ Such arrangements also confer the power to veto airport development, and hence, often, to keep out competitors' flights.
▪ You have much greater freedom of choice how you spend your time -but that freedom also confers greater responsibility on you.
on
▪ Your popularity might be tarnished, but now you have conferred on your people the gift of a nation in the making.
▪ The Constitution confers on the President the whole executive power.
▪ Their finding suggests that pregnancy may confer on some women a protective factor making them less likely to act on suicidal urges.
upon
▪ Stewart was in the partnership strictly at his invitation, and that conferred upon Stewart a junior status.
■ NOUN
act
▪ Section 19 of that Act, in particular, confers general powers of seizure.
advantage
▪ The natural projection of the land along the Thames conferred distinct advantages on West Ham as a site for the new docks.
▪ In this sense, a small private company may confer no great advantage over the personal liability of a partner.
▪ Though many genetic fluctuations do occur, most die out because they fail to confer any survival advantages on gut-dwelling microbes.
▪ An exception arises only where there are concomitant changes that confer an advantage on the rarer types.
authority
▪ Such laws frequently confer considerable discretionary authority on public administrators.
▪ In committing the count's rights to written record, Henry's clerks had conferred on them new authority.
benefit
▪ It is difficult to avoid concluding that, where they do persist, transposable elements must be conferring some benefit.
▪ So it would not be surprising if it conferred its benefits on the heart by altering several things at once.
▪ It is not an argument over which of the two screening strategies will confer the greater medical benefit.
▪ Adtranz argues that California law allows the reimbursement if the action conferred a significant benefit to the public.
▪ In conclusion oesophageal transection and gastric devascularisation appears to confer no benefit over endoscopic sclerotherapy in terms of long term survival after variceal haemorrhage.
▪ In other words, multimedia must confer real benefits.
▪ That is, it is infrastructural and confers a public benefit, from which enterprises in general will gain.
▪ Anchoresses were believed to confer great spiritual benefits on a neighbourhood and all big towns liked to have one.
degree
▪ Therefore, this region may confer some degree of specialization to the protein, in terms of cellular location and/or tissue specificity.
▪ All Henley postgraduate students are registered at Brunel University which also confers the degree.
government
▪ The policy of the United Kingdom is now not to confer recognition on governments as opposed to on states.
▪ It does not deny the truth of the assertion that Parliament could, if it wished, confer such powers upon government.
honour
▪ Poets confer honour neither on themselves nor on their work by using a sophisticated diction.
legitimacy
▪ People who run countries have all too often fallen for the notion that sporting success somehow confers political legitimacy.
power
▪ Indeed, one of the justifications of private property takes as its premise the idea that property ownership confers power.
▪ It gave Becton the title of chief executive officer and conferred extraordinary powers upon him.
▪ It can confer certain powers and responsibilities upon regional and local authorities, and it can also remove those powers.
▪ It seems to confer a strange power on the practitioner.
▪ Numerical strength does not necessarily confer power, but in Whitehall it has always counted towards influence.
▪ Secrecy confers power on those who know the secret while those who do not are at a disadvantage.
▪ Such arrangements also confer the power to veto airport development, and hence, often, to keep out competitors' flights.
▪ That contract confers power on the directors of the company to manage the company.
right
▪ The overall aim is to confer the right on professionals to have their qualifications recognised in all member states.
▪ A person's power to confer rights on others by his consent does, however, expose him to blackmail and abuse.
▪ Hence, regulations confer individual rights and duties which must be respected by the courts of the member states.
▪ Industrial safety legislation will normally confer a right on persons employed.
▪ The Schedule also confers a right of appeal on an unsuccessful applicant or objector to the sheriff.
▪ Private ownership of parts of the system confers only strictly limited rights and powers of control over operation and revenue.
▪ However, such an arrangement confers no rights to exploit minerals if found.
status
▪ To confer the status of value upon excess and extremism is to bring these things back within the pale of decency.
▪ Carrying a pager once conferred status.
▪ Others are purchased because the buyer feels that ownership will confer separateness and status.
▪ The court concluded that it would be inconsistent with these purposes for it to confer tenure status on a teacher.
▪ Oldfield was never conferred with boffin status, unlike his contemporary, Mr Ambient himself, Brian Eno.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ The President trusted him so much that he conferred on him the role of "Principal Advisor".
▪ The university has already conferred honorary degrees on several prime ministers.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Bethel indicated that all institutions conducting courses at degree level in all countries except the United Kingdom conferred their own awards.
▪ He conferred privately with key congressional leaders and together they started the Manhattan Project.
▪ In other words, multimedia must confer real benefits.
▪ It gave Becton the title of chief executive officer and conferred extraordinary powers upon him.
▪ Some specific functions can only be conferred by an order made by the Lord Chancellor.
▪ The effect of this order was to confer second-class citizenship on the proud Washington.
▪ With the first mover advantage conferred by this partnership, we expect to take the lion's share of that new business.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Confer

Confer \Con*fer"\, v. i. To have discourse; to consult; to compare views; to deliberate.

Festus, when he had conferred with the council, answered.
--Acts xxv. 12.

You shall hear us confer of this.
--Shak.

Syn: To counsel; advise; discourse; converse.

Confer

Confer \Con*fer"\ (k[o^]n*f[~e]r"), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Conferred; p. pr. & vb. n. Conferring.] [L. conferre to bring together, contribute, consult; con- + ferre to bear: cf. F. conf['e]rer. See 1st Bear.]

  1. To bring together for comparison; to compare. [Obs.]

    If we confer these observations with others of the like nature, we may find cause to rectify the general opinion.
    --Boyle.

  2. To grant as a possession; to bestow.

    The public marks of honor and reward Conferred upon me.
    --Milton.

  3. To contribute; to conduce. [Obs.]

    The closeness and compactness of the parts resting together doth much confer to the strength of the union.
    --Glanvill.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
confer

1530s, from Middle French conférer (14c.) "to give, converse, compare," from Latin conferre "to bring together," figuratively "to compare; consult, deliberate, talk over," from com- "together" (see com-) + ferre "to bear" (see infer). Sense of "taking counsel" led to conference. The meaning "compare" (common 1530-1650) is largely obsolete, but the abbreviation cf. still is used in this sense. Related: Conferred; conferring.

Wiktionary
confer

vb. 1 (context obsolete intransitive English) To compare. (16th–18th c.) 2 (context intransitive English) To talk together, to consult, discuss; to deliberate. (from 16th c.) 3 (context obsolete transitive English) To bring together; to collect, gather. (16th–17th c.) 4 (context transitive English) To grant as a possession; to bestow. (from 16th c.) 5 (context obsolete intransitive English) To contribute; to conduce. (16th–18th c.)

WordNet
confer

  1. adv. compare (used in texts to point the reader to another location in the text) [syn: cf., cf, see, see also]

  2. [also: conferring, conferred]

confer

  1. v. have a conference in order to talk something over; "We conferred about a plan of action" [syn: confabulate, confab, consult]

  2. present; "The university conferred a degree on its most famous former student, who never graduated"; "bestow an honor on someone" [syn: bestow]

  3. [also: conferring, conferred]

Related phrases:
Wikipedia
CONFER (software)

CONFER is one of the first and one of the most sophisticated computer conferencing systems. It was developed in 1975 at the University of Michigan by then graduate student Robert Parnes. The CONFER system continued to be a widely used communication tool until 1999. CONFER is the progenitor of the computer conferencing systems Caucus, PicoSpan, and YAPP.

Usage examples of "confer".

The case arose out of a series of acts of the legislature of New York, passed between the years 1798 and 1811, which conferred upon Livingston and Fulton the exclusive right to navigate the waters of that State with steam-propelled vessels.

State, as a condition of doing business within its jurisdiction, may exact a license tax from a telegraph company, a large part of whose business is the transmission of messages from one State to another and between the United States and foreign countries, and which is invested with the powers and privileges conferred by the act of Congress passed July 24, 1866, and other acts incorporated in Title LXV of the Revised Statutes?

Nor can a State withdraw Indians within its borders from the operation of acts of Congress regulating trade with them by conferring on them rights of citizenship and suffrage, whether by its constitution or its statutes.

Furthermore, the rights which the present statutes confer are subject to the Anti-Trust Acts, though it can be hardly said that the cases in which the Court has endeavored to draw the line between the rights claimable by patentees and the kind of monopolistic privileges which are forbidden by those acts exhibit entire consistency in their holdings.

Through February and March, despite the weather, Adams kept on the move, traveling back and forth between Amsterdam, Leyden, and The Hague, conferring with as many of his Dutch friends and contacts as possible.

While Adams conferred with Jefferson and Franklin, Abigail and Nabby toured the city, John Quincy serving as their guide and interpreter.

One of the missions conferred upon him was to build an embassy which would serve to welcome the Anakim during their next stay on earth.

Their assertions of the vast benefits conferred upon the human race by experiments upon living animals are made in the journals of the day, in popular magazines--in periodicals which refuse opportunity of rejoinder, and which therefore lend their influence to securing the permanency of untruth.

Swiss nation is in my time of no legs invaded and despoiled by stronger and evil hated and neighboring nations, who claim as in the Anschluss of Hitler that they are friends and are not invading the Swiss but conferring on us gifts of alliance.

Hence an act granting a right of appeal from the Commission to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is not unconstitutional as conferring executive power upon a judicial body.

Washington time, Saturday, RFK and Barnett conferred yet again by telephone.

Ben was presenting a major research project from the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with all the prestige that automatically conferred.

The electrician conferred with his bunkmate, a missile maintenance technician.

A committee was appointed to confer with her respecting the Burman Mission, and at her suggestion several important measures were adopted.

Seymore saw the Channel Eight reporter conferring with his producer and cameraperson, a man with hugely muscled arms.