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Steven Parker
231,275 PointsAssuming you're talking about Unix/Linux/Cygwin/etc, it's short for "concatentate", and it's a tool that takes a list of files and combines them into one file. The output is directed to the "standard output" which means it displays it on the screen unless you direct it otherwise.
This makes it a handy and commonly used way to display the contents of a file on the screen.