Word of the Day

: April 12, 2011

concatenate

verb kahn-KAT-uh-nayt

What It Means

: to link together in a series or chain

concatenate in Context

As part of her presentation, Tiffany created a flow chart that concatenated all of the company’s suppliers and accounts.

“You may want to place fields on a data-entry form quite differently from the way you want them to print on reports. For example, on the data-entry form, you might want to display separate fields for first, middle, and last names, but on a printed report, you may want to concatenate those fields into a single full name.”-- From an article by William Porter in Macworld, February 1, 2011

Did You Know?

"Concatenate" comes directly from Latin "concatenare," which in turn is formed from "con-," meaning "with" or "together," and "catena," meaning "chain." In fact, the word "chain" itself evolved from "catena." "Concatenate" has a somewhat longer history as an adjective, meaning "linked together," than as a verb. The adjective first appeared in English in the 15th century and the verb was in use by the early 17th century. "Catenate," a verb in its own right meaning "to link in a series," had also arrived on the scene by the early 17th century.