Combine

How to spell combine

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce combine

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does combine mean?

1. verbTo join or merge two or more things into a single whole.
2. nounA large agricultural machine that harvests, threshes, and cleans grain in a single operation.

Combine in a sentence

• verb

  The recipe asks you to combine the flour and sugar before adding eggs.

• noun

  The farmer drove the combine across the wheat field at dawn.

• verb

  The two firms plan to combine their research teams next year.

• noun

  A modern combine can clear several acres of barley in an hour.

Where does combine come from?

Language of origin: Latin

Combine traces back to the Late Latin verb combinare, meaning 'to join two by two' or 'to unite'. It was built from com-, meaning 'together', and bini, meaning 'two at a time' or 'in pairs', which is itself related to bis, 'twice'. English took the word in during the late 1300s and 1400s through Old French combiner, at first in the general sense of bringing things into union. Over the centuries the meaning broadened to cover any kind of merging or blending, and by the 1800s farmers in North America applied it as a noun to the great machine that reaps and threshes in one operation, the combine harvester. That pairing root, the same 'two together' idea, explains why the everyday spelling keeps the tidy com- prefix and the single 'b'.

How the word is built

• com- (together)
• -bine (from Latin bini: two by two, in pairs)