Other forms: connected, connecting, connects
To connect two things is to join them so they touch, or so one can reach the other. You connect the printer to the laptop, connect a hose to the tap, connect two dots on the page with a line.
People connect too: they connected straight away and talked all night, and a speaker who connects with an audience has got through to them. Trains and planes connect, which is where a connecting flight and an hour to change terminals come from. A phone call gets connected; a house is connected to the water mains. To connect the dots is to work out how separate facts fit together. Watch the prepositions: you connect one thing TO another, and you connect WITH a person.
1verbconnectTo join two things so that they touch, or so that one can reach the other.
“Connect the blue cable to the socket at the back.”
2verbprovideTo provide a link between places, or between one journey and the next.
“The new line connects the airport to the city centre in twenty minutes.”
3verbwellTo get on well with a person, or to reach an audience.
“They connected immediately and stayed until the cafe closed.”
4verbseeTo see how facts or events relate to one another.
“Nobody connected the two thefts until the same van turned up on both tapes.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Also accepted in games: link
Connect is Latin connecto, to fasten together, built from con-, together, and necto, to bind. That necto is a cousin of two plain English words, knot and knit. Connecting started as tying, and the cables and flights and friendships all still hang off that first knot.
Latin
connectō
English, today
connect
From Latin connectō. From Latin connecto (“fasten together”), from con- + nectere, which is cognate with English knot and English knit.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA