It's the Word of the Day podcast for November 4th.

Today's word is Amalgamate, spelled A-M-A-L-G-A-M-A-T-E.

Amalgamate is a verb.

It's a formal word meaning to unite two or more things into one thing.

Here's the word used in a sentence from the New York Times by Martha Rose Schulman.

Place the cornmeal in a bowl and sift in the flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda.

Stir the mixture with a spoon or whisk to amalgamate.

Today one can amalgamate, that is combine into one, any two or more things, such as hip-hop and

country music, for example. The origins of amalgamate, however, have more to do with heavy metal.

Amalgamate comes from the medieval Latin verb amalgamare,

meaning to combine a metal with mercury. It's been part of English since the 1500s, its introduction

closely trailing that of the noun amalgam, from the medieval Latin word amalgama,

which in its oldest use means a mixture of mercury

and another metal. In modern dentistry, amalgams combining liquid mercury with powders

containing silver tin and other metals are often used for filling holes in teeth. Amalgamate

can be used either technically, implying the creation

of an alloy of mercury, or more generally, for the formation of any compound or combined entity.

With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sakalowski.

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