The automatic or explicit conversion of a value from one data type to another by the programming language or programmer.
Coercion comes from Latin 'coercere' meaning to constrain or force. In programming, it describes how languages 'force' values to change type, either automatically (implicit) or through programmer commands (explicit).
JavaScript's type coercion can be wonderfully weird - it thinks '1' + 1 equals '11' but '1' - 1 equals 0! This happens because addition can mean string concatenation, but subtraction can only mean math, so JavaScript makes different assumptions.
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