'Compose' is Latin for 'put together' — whether music, prose, or your emotions after a shock.
To create or put together a work of music, literature, or art; to form the substance or constitution of something; to calm or settle oneself.
From Old French 'composer' (to arrange, to write), a Romance formation combining Latin 'com-' (together, with) and 'pausāre' (to cease, to rest), which was influenced by and partly conflated with Latin 'pōnere' (to put, to place) and its past participle 'positum.' The French verb blended the ideas of 'putting together' and 'arranging at rest.' The musical sense emerged in the 16th century, and
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