?? Null Coalescing Operator --> What does coalescing mean?

Coalescing is when you have more than one item and then you end up with exactly one—either by joining the items together or by choosing a single item from the group. In the case of the ?? operator, you're choosing the first non-null value of the pair of values.

I'm tempted to lie and say that English is my second language...but the truth is that I just have no idea what 'Coalescing' means. I know what ?? 'does' in C#, but the name doesn't make sense to me.

I looked up the word and I understand it to be a synonym for 'join'.

I'd say a more accurate description of "coalesce" would be "to form one thing from different elements". The "coalescing" of the ?? operator happens because a single value is always resolved from one of the two values. The first non-null value is the result.

Here are some other definitions of coalesce that might help make sense. From Answers, it shows that it means to "grow together; fuse" or "to come together so as to form one whole." In other words, take a sequence of items and make one out of them. So considering that null in this discussion means "empty," coalescing null with a non-empty gives you the non-empty.