conflate \kuhn-FLAYT\, transitive verb: 1. To bring together; to fuse together; to join or meld. 2. To combine (as two readings of a text) into one whole.
Scott Reynolds's creepy debut feature [film] conflates the present and the past with ingenious use of flashbacks.
--Anne Billson, "Bent beneath the weight of its own righteousness," Sunday Telegraph, March 1, 1998
Painting America as a drug-ridden society leads to bad policy -- as does the tendency in some quarters to conflate the various drug abuses into a single dreadful statistic.
--William Raspberry, "Not a Drug-Ridden Society," Washington Post, April 21, 2000
. . . lean and mobile military units that conflate the traditional categories of police officers, commandos, emergency-relief specialists, diplomats, and, of course, intelligence officers.
--Robert D. Kaplan, "The roles of the CIA and the military may merge," The Atlantic, February 1998
Conflate is from Latin conflatus, past participle of conflare, "to blow together; to put together," from con-, "with, together" + flare, "to blow."