piece together

English

Verb

piece together

1. To physically assemble (or reassemble) from fragments or pieces.

   The community pieced together a quilt using a square stitched in each household.

   It took years for the archeologist to piece together the fragments of the shattered vase.

   • 2013, Tom Shone, "Oscar nominations pull a surprise by showing some taste – but will it last?", The Guardian, 11 January 2013:

     Perhaps the best news to come out of the nominations was the brightened box-office prospects for such films as Benh Zeitlin's Beasts of the Southern Wild, a dazzling piece of magic realism pieced together from just $1.8m, some rusty bathtubs and whatever Louisiana bric-a-brac its youthful collective of film-makers could lay their hands on.

2. (figuratively) To reconstruct an event or goal from incomplete or flawed elements.

   The detective painstakingly collected clues to piece together what happened that tragic night.

   • 2011, Phil McNulty, "Chelsea 3 - 5 Arsenal", BBC Sport, 29 October 2011:

     Arsenal have been piecing their season back together after a poor start and the manner of this win will provide added reserves of confidence and self-belief.

Translations

to physically assemble from fragments or pieces

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 拼湊／拼凑 (zh) (pīncòu), 拼凑 (zh) (pīncòu)

• Finnish: liittää yhteen, yhdistää (fi), koota (fi)
• French: assembler (fr), reconstituer (fr)
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• German: zusammenfügen (de)
• Persian: سر هم کردن (sar-e ham kardan)
• Spanish: juntar (es), montar (es)

(figuratively) to reconstruct an event or goal from incomplete or flawed elements

• Finnish: selvittää (fi)
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• French: reconstituer (fr), réassembler (fr)