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BNC: 18782 COCA: 17090

amalgam

noun

amal·​gam ə-ˈmal-gəm How to pronounce amalgam (audio)
1
: a mixture of different elements
an amalgam of musical forms
The crowd was an amalgam of young and old.
2
: an alloy of mercury with another metal that is solid or liquid at room temperature according to the proportion of mercury present and is used especially in making tooth cements
Dentists have used silver-colored mercury amalgam (mercury mixed, about 50/50, with a combination of silver, tin, copper and other metals) to fill cavities for at least 150 years. Jennifer Huget

Example Sentences

a church that is an amalgam of traditional and modern architectural styles
Recent Examples on the Web The right’s margin of victory would be wider if the Center Party, an amalgam of free-market farmers and metropolitan liberals, had sided with its natural partners to the right. Dominic Green, WSJ, 13 Sep. 2022 From the parade to the nightlife burlesque shows to Pop Art Alley, it’s an amalgam of fun for fans of all kinds. Hunter Boyce, ajc, 9 Aug. 2022 Hundreds of stories of perseverance make up this amalgam of artists, who are still struggling to return to their neighborhood. The Christian Science Monitor, 1 Aug. 2022 This time, the pale yellow pearls were an amalgam of pineapple and ahi amarillo, alluring and smoky for the camera and a welcome treat on the tongue. Amy Drew Thompson, Orlando Sentinel, 1 Sep. 2022 This isn’t my father, per se, but an amalgam of 1960s Suburban Dads. John Kelly, Washington Post, 3 July 2022 In a voice that’s an amalgam of both the suit and Christensen, Vader delivers the lines that Obi-Wan finally needed to hear in order to let go of his guilt. Sydney Odman, The Hollywood Reporter, 22 June 2022 And his handler was calling the prison, looking for him, the real Lauren McCauley — Lauren is an amalgam of two different agents — and the real handler was calling the prison. Lauren Huff, EW.com, 5 Aug. 2022 The amalgam of person and place commingling into something unique is the wonder that lives in creation. Kelly Allen, House Beautiful, 8 July 2022 See More

Word History

Etymology

Middle English amalgam, malgame "alloy of mercury with another metal," borrowed from Medieval Latin amalgama, borrowed from Arabic al maljam, al muljam, from al "the" + maljam, muljam, perhaps borrowed from Greek málagma "emollient," from malak-, stem of malássein "to soften" (derivative of malakós "soft') + -ma, resultative noun suffix — more at mollify

Note: The origin of Medieval Latin amalgama has been the subject of speculation since at least the nineteenth century, with no conclusive results. The orientalist Marcel Devic (Dictionnaire étymologique des mots français d'origine orientale, Paris, 1876), based on a supposed variant algame, constructed an Arabic source which he rendered as ʽamal al-jamaʽa, with ʽamal translated as "practice (opposed to theory), work" ("pratique, œuvre") and jamaʽa as "conjunction, meeting" ("conjonction, réunion"), perhaps as an alteration of mujāmʽa, the whole meaning "the act of consummating a marriage" ("l'acte de consommation du mariage"). This, according to Devic, would be an appropriate alchemical metaphor for the joining of mercury with another metal. His etymology has been accepted, in the twentieth century, by the Französisches etymologisches Wörterbuch and Trésor de la langue française. The difficulty with this hypothesis, however—as already noted by the Oxford English Dictionary in 1884—is that no such collocation has ever been located in an Arabic text. A genuine Arabic predecessor of amalgama was pointed out by Julius Ruska in an alchemical text that he entitles "Book of the Missive of Jafʽar al-Ṣādiq on the Science of Art and the Noble Stone" ("Buch des Sendschreibens Ǵafʽar alṢādiqs über die Wissenschaft der Kunst und des edlen Steins," in Arabische Alchemisten II. Ǵafʽar alṢādiq, der sechste Imām, Heidelberg, 1924, pp. 72-73). The word used is muljam, while the process of amalgamating is iljam. Ruska notes that muljam in the sense "amalgam" is also found in the Arabic dictionary Lisān al-ʽArab by Ibn Manẓūr. Since the word cannot be parsed as the derivative of an Arabic root that is at all semantically apt, Ruska returns to the idea that it is a borrowing of Greek málagma "emollient" (also, in Latin texts, "poultice"), hypothesizing that it was borrowed as a medical and alchemical term via a Syriac intermediary. The argument against this conjecture has been that the semantic fit is poor, as a word meaning "emollient" or "poultice" has little evident connection to mercury alloys. Hence, if the Greek hypothesis is correct, a significant element still appears to lack elucidation.

First Known Use

15th century, in the meaning defined at sense 2

Time Traveler
The first known use of amalgam was in the 15th century

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