prepend?

[a non-amos]

to add a prefix

Similar to append, but on the beginning of the word

[ellen fremedon]

Alan,

The OED says:

prepend, v.1 rare.
trans. To weigh up mentally, ponder, consider; to premeditate. Also intr.
Although the sense of premeditation is sometimes apparent, in many instances the apparent suggestion of a more general sense of consideration suggests mistaken use for PERPEND v.

(Which makes me wonder whether Chi accepts "perpend"?)

 AND

prepend, v.2 Chiefly Computing.
 trans. To add at the beginning, to prefix, prepose; esp. to add or append (a character, string, file, etc.) at the front of an existing string, file, etc.

With a usage example from 2000! to wit: "2000 Proc. National Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 97 1755/2 To further reduce motion artifact, a 32-point navigator echo was prepended to each phase-encode echo."

Thanks,

Ellen Fremedon

[Alan W]

EF, we currently allow perpend,  parpend and propend, but not prepend.

The computer usage is one I recognise. This usage has been around at least since 1991, when it first appeared in the Jargon File, the glossary of obscure computer terms that later gave rise to The New Hacker's Dictionary. Actually, the word was used in a 1990 version of the file: "Underlining is often suggested by substituting underscores for spaces and prepending and appending one underscore to the underlined phrase." The definition of the word didn't appear till the following year.

It's easy via Google to find thousands of examples of this computer usage of prepend. However, it must be said that most of these usage examples are very technical. But when we give some weight to the other meaning, "rare" though it be, there seems to be enough justification to include the word in our list.