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cons: /konz/, /kons/ [from LISP] 1. vt. To add a new element to a
specified list, esp. at the top. “OK, cons picking a replacement
for the console TTY onto the agenda.” 2. cons up: vt. To synthesize from smaller pieces: “to
cons up an example”. In LISP itself, cons is the most
fundamental operation for building structures. It takes any two objects
and returns a dot-pair or
two-branched tree with one object hanging from each branch. Because the
result of a cons is an object, it can be used to build binary trees of any
shape and complexity. Hackers think of it as a sort of universal
constructor, and that is where the jargon meanings spring from.
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