John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> writes:
> Wikipedia's first sentence about monoids is:
>
> In abstract algebra, a branch of mathematics, a monoid is an algebraic
> structure with a single, associative binary operation and an identity
> element.
>
> Which is *not* intuitive to someone that comes from a background in....
> any other programming language.
>

Instead of Wikipedia, why not try a dictionary? Looking up monoid using
dictionary.com:

An operator * and a value x form a monoid if * is
associative and x is its left and right identity.

On the other hand, appendable doesn't seem to be a word, and while you
can infer that it means "something that can be appended to", that's only
half of the story...