See: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Combinator.html http://www.ece.uc.edu/~franco/C511/html/Scheme/ycomb.html In mathematical terms, "a generalized function whose argument is also a function". Divmod Combinator's purpose is to provide Python developers with a development environment by performing common manipulations upon a body of code. It is named after a combinator because both its input and output are code. Because of the popularity of the Y-combinator, it is conventional to title the Windows drive letter where you keep code managed by Combinator "Y:".