The word verstaile means having great diversity or variety.Carbon is a very friendly element. The number of carbon compounds which are known to scientists till date is more than three million. It is owing to this property of it is called a versatile element.This versatile nature is because of:Tetravalency:Tetra means four and valency means the number of electrons gained or losed or shared to attain stable configuration. So, tetravalency refers to the phenomenon of sharing four electrons by an element to attain stable condition.Now, the electronic configuration of carbon is 2, 4. It shares four electrons with other elements to attain a stable configuration.Catenation:This is a property of self-linking. This property depends on size of atom which will decide the M-M bond strength. This property is more unique for carbon as more than thousand atoms of carbon can be linked together.

Alotropes of carbon
Becoz carbon Shares its electron with others element and carbon has 4valancey

Versatile nature of carbon due to the psence of covalent bonds enables it to form a large number of compounds.