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

More example sentences

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.

Test Your Memory

What is the meaning of "farouche," our Word of the Day from March 28, 2011? The answer is ...

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