Parallelizing

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The act of arranging tasks or operations so they occur at the same time to increase efficiency
2. Transforming a sequence of activities to execute simultaneously across multiple processors or units
3. Enabling processes or computations to be performed concurrently rather than sequentially to speed up completion

Etymology: "Parallelizing" is the present participle of "parallelize", which is "parallel" with the suffix "-ize" attached. The suffix has a long pedigree: it descends from the Ancient Greek "-izein", which turned nouns and adjectives into verbs meaning "to make into" or "to treat in the manner of." Greek passed it to Late Latin as "-izare", and from there it travelled through Old French into Middle English as "-isen", which settled into the modern "-ize" once English spelling had standardized. "Parallel" itself comes from Greek "parallēlos", literally "beside one another," from "para" (beside) and "allēlōn" (of one another). The sense of lines that never meet arose from that idea of running alongside. Attaching "-ize" to it produced a verb meaning to arrange things side by side, and the modern computing sense grew from that: to split a task so that separate parts run at the same time rather than one after another.