means The act of combining separate parts into a unified whole — whether that's bringing systems together, blending communities, or, in math, finding the total accumulated by summing infinitely many tiny slices.

from From Latin 'integrare,' to make whole or renew, built on 'integer' — meaning untouched, intact, complete — which itself joins 'in-' (not) with a root tied to 'tangere,' to touch. So at its heart an 'integer' is the un-touched, the unbroken; to integrate is to restore that wholeness. The mathematical sense was popularized in the late 17th century alongside the calculus of Newton and Leibniz, and the social sense — knitting separated groups into one community — rose to prominence much later.