coalesce

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English

WOTD – 3 April 2009

Etymology

From Latin coalēscō, from co- + alēscō (“grow up”).

Pronunciation

Verb

coalesce (third-person singular simple present coalesces, present participle coalescing, simple past and past participle coalesced)

  1. (of separate elements) To join into a single mass or whole.
    Synonyms: amalgamate, combine, join, merge, unite, fuse
    The droplets coalesced into a puddle.
    • 2005, Plato, translated by Lesley Brown and 2, Sophist:
      […] when a thing's own light and the light from something else coalescing into one on bright and smooth surfaces produce a form which yields a perception reversed from the way a thing normally looks.
  2. (of a whole or a unit) To form from different pieces or elements.
    The puddle coalesced from the droplets as they ran together.
  3. (engineering) To bond pieces of metal into a continuous whole by liquefying parts of each piece, bringing the liquids into contact, and allowing the combined liquid to solidify.
  4. (of separate groups or persons) To merge, to intermingle freely.
    • 1842, [anonymous collaborator of Letitia Elizabeth Landon], chapter XXV, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. , volume II, London: Henry Colburn, , →OCLC, page 27:
      It was not a wise thing to enter a close clique, my good madam, until you had examined both them and yourself, and considered how far you were likely to coalesce.
    • 1981 August 1, Aurora Corona, “The Dead Line”, in Gay Community News, page 4:
      We in the gay male community who are white […] will need to do conscious raising on racism with each other to effectively work with different racial groups. It follows that when attempting to coalesce with women that sexism conscious raising would need to occur.
    • 2023 August 16, Jonathan Rauch, “Why Not Pence?”, in The Atlantic‎:
      The result is that once again, as in 2016, Trump is likely to prevail because Republicans cannot coalesce around an alternative—even though a candidate who is experienced in government, solidly conservative, and acceptable to most factions of the party is right there in front of them.
  5. (databases, SQL) To convert a null value to a defined value.
    • 2018, Allen G. Taylor, SQL For Dummies‎, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN:
      You can improve the display by coalescing the ID columns. As I note in Chapter 9, the COALESCE expression takes on the value of the first non-null value in a list of values.

Related terms

Translations

Latin

Pronunciation

Verb

coalēsce

  1. second-person singular present active imperative of coalēscō

Portuguese

Verb

coalesce

  1. inflection of coalescer:
    1. third-person singular present indicative
    2. second-person singular imperative
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