Other forms: compiled, compiling, compiles
To compile is to gather scattered material together into one organised collection. Compile a list, compile a report, compile the results from twelve schools.
The work is the gathering, not the writing: somebody who compiles an anthology selects and arranges what other people wrote. That is why compile takes lists, reports, indexes, albums and databases as objects, and rarely takes a novel. In computing it has a precise second sense: to compile source code is to translate it into a form a machine can run, and a compiler is the program that does it. The noun is a compilation, which in music means an album of tracks gathered from elsewhere.
1verbcompileTo gather material together into one organised whole.
“She compiled the figures from every branch.”
2verbcomputingIn computing, to translate source code into a runnable form.
“The project takes four minutes to compile.”
compile is a way of gathering.
Also accepted in games: assemble
Latin compilare meant to plunder or pile up — com-, together, plus pilare, to press or plunder. Early compilers of books were accused of stealing from other authors, which the word says outright, and the disreputable edge has worn off completely.
Latin
compīlō — to plunder
Old French
compiler
Middle English
compilen
English, today
compile
From Middle English compilen, from Old French compiler, from Latin compīlō (“to plunder”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Sharper Verbs, Computing & Code