collate

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin collātus (“brought together”),^[2][3][4][5] the form that serves as the past participle of cōnferō (“to bring together”),^[4][5][6][7] with the English suffix -ate.^[4][8] Merriam-Webster Unabridged takes the verb as partly a back-formation from English from collation.^[9] The OED compares Old French collater, used in the 14th century of comparing documents,^[2] and Weekley derived the English verb from it.^[10] The Latin verb is formed from com- (“with, together”) and ferō (“to bear, carry”);^[5][3][4] the participle lātus (“borne, carried”) has a different root,^[5][6] which Klein gives as the zero grade of Proto-Indo-European *tel- (“to bear, carry”), also the root of tollō,^[6] while the present stem is from Proto-Indo-European *bher- (“to carry”).^[5]

Earliest recorded meaning

To confer a benefice on a person: 1558, in a document printed in Strype's Annals of the Reformation (1709).^[2] The Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English also date the word to the mid 16th century,^[8][11] and Dictionary.com to 1550–60.^[12]

Semantic evolution

The word began as a church term: from 1558 to 1670 one could collate a benefice on a person, and since 1702 the verb meant to appoint a cleric to a benefice, now said of a bishop who fills a living in his own gift.^[2][8] The wider sense "to confer, bestow, grant" is recorded from 1591, in Savile's translation of Tacitus, to 1717.^[2][9] The sense of bringing things together to compare them closely appears in Bacon's Essays of 1612,^[2][4] which Barnhart and Etymonline take as the first use of the word.^[13][5] It soon narrowed to comparing a copy of a text with other copies or with the original, in order to correct it (before 1657), and to checking a copy of a legal document against the original (1683).^[2] Johnson (1755) gave "to compare one thing of the same kind with another" as its first sense.^[14] In printing and bookbinding it has meant since 1770 to check that the sheets of a book are complete and in the right order,^[2][5] and Collins also uses it as a non-technical word for gathering the sections of a book.^[7] Merriam-Webster Unabridged adds the sense of collecting data, checking it and arranging it in order.^[9]

Timeline

• 1558 – to confer a benefice on a person (obsolete by 1670).^[2]
• 1591 – to confer or bestow (obsolete by 1717).^[2][9]
• 1606 – to make an appointment to a benefice.^[2]
• 1612 – to bring together and compare carefully.^[2][4]
• before 1657 – to compare a copy of a text with other copies or the original.^[2]
• 1683 – to check a copy of a legal document against the original.^[2]
• 1702 – to appoint a cleric to a benefice.^[2][8]
• 1770 – in printing and bookbinding, to check the sheets of a book.^[2][5]

Meanings

Verb

1. To compare texts, statements or other material carefully, noting where they agree and differ: The scholar collated four early printings of the play.^[7][9][2]
2. To gather information, check it and arrange it in order: The survey answers were collated into a single table.^[9]
3. (bookbinding) To check the number and order of the pages or sections of a book; also, to gather them in order.^[7][2]
4. (Christianity) To appoint a cleric to a benefice.^[7][2][8]
5. (obsolete, 1591–1717) To confer or bestow.^[2][9]

Word family

• collator
• collatable
• uncollated

Related words

• collation
• confer
• oblate
• relate
• translate

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
4. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
7. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
8. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
10. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
11. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
13. ^ Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
14. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.