documentiate

Documentiate is a neologism used as a verb meaning to produce, compile, or organize documentation for a person, project, process, or dataset. It stresses creating formal, structured records intended to support understanding, reproducibility, and accountability. In fields such as software development, research, and policy, to documentiate a workflow or dataset means generating comprehensive documentation, including procedures, metadata, and version history, that accompanies the primary materials.

Etymology: The term appears to be a coinage built from the noun document and the productive English suffix -ate. It is related to but distinct from more established forms such as document and documentation. Some writers also employ "documentate" as an alternative spelling, though usage is sparse.

Usage: Documentiate is not widely attested in major dictionaries and remains relatively uncommon. When used, it often appears in discussions about documentation practices, code health, or data stewardship.

Examples: The team documentiate the deployment process to satisfy audit requirements. Researchers documentiate the experimental protocol to aid replication.

See also: Document, Documentation, Metadata, Data curation, Knowledge management, Reproducibility.