I&#x27;d think that it&#x27;s chaining together the characters in the file, catenating a file to the screen. Wikipedia claims that the first version of Unix did a <i>single</i> file.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Cat_(Unix)#History" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Cat_(Unix)#History</a><p>Whereas &quot;con&quot;catenate means to link separate things together. These are minor distinctions, but if somebody is going to call things &quot;asinine&quot; they should at least get the pedantry correct.