Concurrent = multiple things at the same time
Cumulative = amount of stuff added up over time
With regards to prison sentences?
Sentences served concurrently are served at the same time. If someone was found guilty of 3 different crimes, and was sentenced to 1, 3 and 5 years in prison for them, and they were to be served concurrently, they’d be in prison for a total of 5 years.
Cumulative (or consecutive, depending on where you’re from) sentences are served one after another, so in the above example, they’d be in prison for a total of 9 years.
It’s also possible for (for example) the 1 and 3 year sentences to be served cumulatively, and the 5 year to be served concurrently (in which case the total would be 8 years).
It’s also possible for (for example) the 1 and 3 year sentences to be served cumulatively, and the 5 year to be served concurrently (in which case the total would be 8 years).
Wouldn’t that still be 9 years? 1 and 3 are cumulative, giving a 4 year sentence, and the 5 years is concurrent with that. 4 & 5 concurrent makes 5.
To get 8, wouldn’t you want the 3 and 5 served consecutively with the 1 year being concurrent?
Yep, you’re right. Confused myself with all the cumulative vs consecutive vs concurrent jabber.
Not in regards to prison sentences, just in general
It is the same thing but with less prison time.
Concurrent: at the same time - if you eat two cookies at the same time you’re eating them concurrently. Cumulative: accumulating/growing over time - If you eat a cookie now and eat a cookie later you’ve cumulatively eaten 2 cookies. Bonus points: wouldn’t it have been a lot easier to google ‘define:<word>’ than to make a post here to get other people to answer for you? You’d get the answer a lot quicker the other way, too.
Edit: I typed out two sets of the same numbers, one in a row, intonating one after the other, and the others in a column in an attempt to impart the idea of all at once.
My Lemmy client put both on single lines, which is confusing. So I removed the original comment.
If you want to start a new line, you can either type three spaces at the end of the line or a backslash. I think it should work on all clients, but I’m not sure.
1\
2results in
1
2Thanks for the tip!
