Word of the Day Archive
Friday February 23, 2001
confrere \KON-frair\ , noun:
A fellow member of a fraternity or profession; a colleague; a comrade; an intimate associate.
At Father Kilmartin's death the book was left unfinished (a sign of the times: not in manuscript, but on his laptop); and the arduous but also extremely delicate task of putting it into publishable condition was carried out by his Jesuit confrere, Robert J. Daly.
-- Jaroslav Pelikan, "The Eucharist as Puzzle", Commonweal, May 7, 1999
The reason for this was that our government, out of the weaknesses Kissinger himself describes, was treating that adversary as a confrere whose hideous character flaws could not be discussed.
-- Gabriel Schoenfeld, "Was Kissinger Right?", Commentary, May 1999
Baudelaire knew that this brave defense of the much derided middle class, offered without a touch of sarcasm, put him at odds with his confreres; to them, after all,"that inoffensive being" the bourgeois,"who would like nothing better than to love good painting," had long been anathema.
-- Peter Gay, Pleasure Wars
Confrere comes from Old French, from Medieval Latin confrater, from Latin com-, "with, together" + frater, "brother."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for confrere
