append

verb

ap·​pend ə-ˈpend How to pronounce append (audio)
appended; appending; appends

transitive verb

1
: attach, affix
appended a diagram to the instructions
2
: to add as a supplement or appendix (as in a book)
notes appended to each chapter

Did you know?

Add Append Onto Your Vocabulary

Append is a somewhat formal word. Lawyers, for example, often speak of appending items to other documents, and lawmakers frequently append small bills to big ones, hoping that everyone will be paying attention only to the main part of the big bill and won't notice. When we append a small separate section to the end of a report or a book, we call it an appendix. But in the early years of email, the words we decided on were attach and attachment, probably because appendixes are thought of as unimportant, whereas the attachment is often the whole reason for sending an email.

Examples of append in a Sentence

append the prefix “un-” to each of these words
Recent Examples on the Web The protocol ensures One True Chain through a tournament for bitcoin miners: miners compete for a reward to append a block onto the chain. Korok Ray, Forbes, 15 Feb. 2024 Some lists could contain more than 200 entries that must be appended to the DBX. Dan Goodin, Ars Technica, 7 Feb. 2024 When Armenta’s parents, taking a page out of the Sandmann playbook, threatened to sue, Deadspin updated the article further and appended an apologetic statement to it. Christian Schneider, National Review, 21 Dec. 2023 By the end of July 2005, Kennedy’s Salon article had been appended with five correction notes. Tribune News Service, Hartford Courant, 4 Jan. 2024 Every time an Ars writer in the liveblog interface types in the next line of liveblog text or promotes a picture or a comment, the action generates a bit of JSON that gets uploaded to an S3 bucket and appended to a couple of different JSON files there. Lee Hutchinson, Ars Technica, 9 Aug. 2023 Roma and Sinti prisoners had the letter Z appended to their number, the first letter of the pejorative German word Zigeuner, which was used at the time for these communities. Smithsonian Magazine, 25 Jan. 2024 The misleading phrasing should be changed for clarity, and a note should be appended to the story to acknowledge the change. Washington Examiner, 15 Dec. 2023 He was appointed to institutes and commissions, took on administrative duties, appended his name to significant research papers. Lucy Sante, The New Yorker, 11 Nov. 2023

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'append.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Etymology

Latin appendere, to hang, weigh out, from ad- + pendere to weigh — more at pendant

First Known Use

circa 1509, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Time Traveler
The first known use of append was circa 1509

Dictionary Entries Near append

Cite this Entry

“Append.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/append. Accessed 29 Mar. 2024.

Kids Definition

append

verb
ap·​pend ə-ˈpend How to pronounce append (audio)
: to add as something extra
append a postscript to a letter

More from Merriam-Webster on append

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