3

I am looking for a verb that would mean to make a list of elements unique.

For example, let's say I have a list of elements and some of them can exist more then once in the list (duplicates).

What verb can I use for the action of removing such duplicates and make my list composed of unique elements only?

A. Gille
  • 133
  • 1
    Possible answer: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/48093/word-that-means-reduce-to-unique-parts – user307254 Apr 17 '19 at 09:18
  • What if I don't want to remove duplicates, but for example rename them with a unique name, what would be the right verb to describe this action? – A. Gille Apr 17 '19 at 09:49
  • You could “setify” your list, i.e. assign your list variable to a set variable, and have the language’s built in functions remove the duplicates. –  Apr 17 '19 at 22:59

2 Answers2

5

This is deduplication (commonly used when storing large amounts of data on servers):

Eliminate duplicate or redundant information from (something, especially computer data)

Oxford Dictionary

However, I think that “to make multiple elements unique” is something completely different!

  • I changed the title to clarify. I checked the definition, it's what I was looking for – A. Gille Apr 17 '19 at 09:10
  • 1
    There is also the informal term "uniquify" which is used in computing for small lists (eg. using the -u option to sort). This doesn't appear in major dictionaries but: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/uniquify –  Apr 17 '19 at 09:12
0

In a comment under your question you ask this:

What if I don't want to remove duplicates, but for example rename them with a unique name, what would be the right verb to describe this action?

If this is what you really want to describe, then you're looking for an adverb, not a verb:

I want to uniquely name the list elements.

That has nothing to with removing duplicate items (which is what deduplication means—and is a good answer if that's what you were looking for), but changing the names of duplicate items so that they are no longer duplicates—and keeping those renamed items.

Jason Bassford
  • 38,040