to fit separate parts together to make a finished object
We spent the afternoon assembling the new bookshelf from the flat-pack box.
He carefully assembled the model airplane piece by piece.
✦ Same origin as Sense 1: from Old French assembler, Latin assimulare.
to come together, or bring people or things together, in one place for a purpose
At eight o’clock sharp, all the employees assembled in the conference room for the briefing.
The rescue volunteers quickly assembled outside the flooded village.
✦ Late Middle English, from Old French assembler, from Latin assimulare “to bring together, unite.”
(computing) to translate code written in assembly language into machine code
The programmer assembled the source code into an executable file.
Before debugging, you need to assemble the module with the correct flags.
✦ From the general sense of ‘put together,’ specialized in the 1950s with the rise of assembly language programming.
