append

To append means to add or attach something to the end of something else—usually a larger document, list, or collection of data. Think of it like adding a sunroom to the back of a house; you're not changing the original structure, but you are making it bigger by adding an extension at the end.

The word comes from the Latin appendere, meaning "to hang upon." This gives you a sense of something being attached as an extra element. You might append a postscript (P.S.) to a letter, or append a bibliography to a research paper. In computer programming, appending is a very common term that means adding something to the end of a list, string, or file.

It's important to note that "append" implies adding something at the end. If you add something in the middle, it's not appending—it's inserting!

You can also use "append" in literary or formal contexts. For example, an author might append an epilogue to a story to explain what happened to the characters years later. Or, a historian might append a newly discovered transcript to their book, providing raw evidence to support their theory.

So whether you're adding notes to a report, code to a script, or an afterword to a novel, to append is to add something extra at the end—completing and enhancing what already exists.