collating

Verb

collate (third-person singular simple present collates, present participle collating, simple past and past participle collated)

1. (transitive) To examine diverse documents and so on, to discover similarities and differences.
   • The young attorneys were set the task of collating the contract submitted by the other side with the previous copy.
2. (transitive) To assemble something in a logical sequence.
   • Detest your own age. Build a better one. And to set that on foot read incredibly dull essays upon Marlowe to your friends. For which purpose one must collate editions in the British Museum.1922 October 26, Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room, Richmond, London: […] Leonard & Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, →OCLC; republished London: The Hogarth Press, 1960, →OCLC, page 106
3. (transitive) To sort multiple copies of printed documents into sequences of individual page order, one sequence for each copy, especially before binding.
   • Collating was still necessary because they had to insert foldout sheets and index tabs into the documents.
4. (obsolete) To bestow or confer.
   • Becauſe thoſe hereticall Biſhops being depoſed and reduced into Lay-communion, could not therefore collate baptiſme for their want of holy Orders: […]1651, Jer[emy] Taylor, “Section IV”, in Clerus Domini: or, A Discourse of the Divine Institution, Necessity, Sacrednesse, and Separation of the Office Ministerial. […], London: […] R[ichard] Royston...
5. (transitive) To admit a cleric to a benefice; to present and institute in a benefice, when the person presenting is both the patron and the ordinary; followed by to.