It's the word of the day for November 24th.

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

Amalgamate is a verb.

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

Here's the word used in a sentence from the Irish Independent by Charlie Weston.

Ten years ago, there were 339 credit unions in Ireland, but that is down to 187, according to central bank figures. Part of the rationale

for credit unions to amalgamate to create larger units is so they can expand their mortgage and

business lending. 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 the word 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 amalgama,

which in its oldest use means a mixture of mercury and another metal.

In dentistry, amalgams combining liquid mercury with powders containing

silver, tin, and other metals are sometimes used for filling holes in teeth. The word 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 Sokolowski.

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