Confluence

Take a rectangular piece of graph paper. Place it on one vertex with your favourite reducible Lambda Calculus expression at the top. Apply the first reduction and write the result on the vertex at the other end of the left edge. Apply the next reduction to this new expression and go right this time. Repeat ad finitum. You should have drawn a zig zag path downwards. Reordering the reductions takes you to the same point. This arriving-at-the-same-point-property is called confluence.

Con"flu*ence n. [L. confluentia.]

1.

The act of flowing together; the meeting or junction of two or more streams; the place of meeting.

New York stood at the confluence of two rivers.
Bancroft.

2.

Any running together of separate streams or currents; the act of meeting and crowding in a place; hence, a crowd; a concourse; an assemblage.

You see this confluence, this great flood of vistors.
Shak.

The confluence . . . of all true joys.
Boyle.

© Webster 1913.