and

And is a coordinating conjunction used to join words, phrases, or clauses of equal syntactic importance. It primarily signals addition or inclusion, as in apples and oranges or she bought a book and a pen.

It can connect items in a simple list, link adjectives or nouns with the same function, and join independent clauses to express sequence or consequence, as in "He left, and the crowd dispersed."

Etymology and cognates: The word originates in Old English and from Proto-Germanic, with close relatives in related languages such as Dutch en and German und. It is among the most common words in English.

In logic and computing, and denotes a conjunction: the truth of the statement depends on both sides. The symbol ∧ is often used in formal logic, and many programming languages implement "and" as a binary operator, such as && or &.

Usage notes: and can be part of idioms and compounds such as "and so on" or "and/or" to express inclusive connections. In lists, the optional Oxford comma is used by some style guides but not universally.

Across languages, the concept of "and" functions as a basic connective, reflecting a common semantic need to combine elements and indicate addition or cooperation.