As making everybody equally unhappy is easier than making them
happy, I suggest sole use of 'con/catenate'./s
On Sun, Sep 15 2024, Damian McGuckin wrote:
Somebody on the internet tried to assert that "concatenate" was
a
computer term.
Interesting. I would assert that 'concatenate' is (now) a
computing term. Personally, I don't remember when I last asked to
concatenate my order with one consisting of a tea and slice of
cake. :) I am interested if anyone knows how concatenate became
the standard term for it's use in computing; it seems like an
obscure word to reach for regardless of the prefix.
One comes from the Latin 'catenat' and the other to
'con-catenat-'.
So, even its usage in Latin is technically separate. Any Latin
scholars here?
...
I thought that "catentat-" means to "link in a chain" (as in by
things
like atoms or molecules that do it for themselves) and that
"concatenat-" means to "link together in a chain" by some
external
party, i.e.
atoms can do the chaining for themselves
but
files need Doug or Holger or myself to do the chaining
N.B. Not a scholar, but I agree.
The 'con-' prefix creates similar subtle distinctions elsewhere.
From the etymology of 'connect', I think you could 'nect' (tie) an
individual something to another (or many into pairs), but to tie
many somethings into one I would 'con-nect' them. But, as always,
beware the pitfalls of relating formal Latin to modern English - I
deliberately use a hypothetical example.
Taking a cue from physics and maths, a 'catenary' (the only other
time I can think of the root in current usage) refers to the curve
formed by a rope/string/chain hung from two points. I think you
could therefore argue that catenate refers more to the link itself
than the resultant structure. 'Atoms can catenate to others' - we
are interested in their links. 'A polymer is made of concatenated
monomers' - we are interested in the 'all together' bit.
Thus, I think that you could argue that when linking many things
into something 'new' you are concatenating, with a single link
sufficiently expressed by catenate. When we use terms applying to
'1, 2, or many', we often choose the more plural for general use,
hence 'concatenate' and probably partly why I don't use nect in my
day-to-day. I would argue that cat(1) concatenates files onto
standard output because the end result of all the successive
catenations is the desirable part.
I think that there is a similar situation with join/conjoin. I
program in Clojure, which uses `conj` to add elements to a
datastructure in the logical/efficient way. 'Conjoin' has a better
sense of 'joining with the existing stuff', i.e. `conj` returns
the same type as the input datastructure. Using `join` for this
operation would not be confusing but suggests a strictly binary
function with equally-typed arguments, at least to me.
I have to admit that 40+ years of using "concatenate" would take
a lot
of unlearning.
Of course, `conj` is probably named just so to align with `cons`
(short for construct (v.)). Convention and familiarity rule here,
or else use of con/catenate would not be consistent. Why not
'chain', 'agglomerate', or 'serialize'? I would personally
consider concatenate an unpaired word with a cranberry morpheme(?)
and therefore best used in full most of the time, even for a
grammar-heavy ecosystem as Groff has.
I am very much on Doug's side there. Isn't "use" being used here
in
its more general use?
Took me a few goes to parse this. I wonder how people feel about
'usage'?
Thanks to anybody bothering with this for your work on Groff, by
the way. I've used it to write coursework, essays, and other
documents since secondary school with all sorts of odd formatting.
I hope it isn't rude to chime in as a list-lurker, and that I'm
doing it right; I don't mean to just add to the noise.
Cheers,
Findlay
