American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Any of various alloys of mercury with other metals, especially:
- n. An alloy of mercury and silver used in dental fillings.
- n. An alloy of mercury and tin used in silvering mirrors.
- n. A combination of diverse elements; a mixture: an amalgam of strength, reputation, and commitment to ethical principles. See Synonyms at mixture.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A compound of mercury or quicksilver with another metal; any metallic alloy of which mercury forms an essential constituent part. Amalgams are used for a great variety of purposes, as for cold-tinning, water-gilding, and water-silvering, for coating the zinc plates of a battery, and for the protection of metals from oxidation. A native amalgam of mercury and silver is found in isometric crystals in the mines of Obermoschel in Bavaria, and in Hungary, Norway, Sweden, Chili, etc.
- n. Figuratively, a mixture or compound of different things.
- To mix, as metals, by amalgamation; amalgamate.
- To become amalgamated.
- n. A combination of different things
- n. metallurgy An alloy containing mercury
- v. archaic, transitive, intransitive To amalgamate.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. An alloy of mercury with another metal or metals
- n. A mixture or compound of different things.
- n. (Min.) A native compound of mercury and silver.
- v. To amalgamate.
- n. a combination or blend of diverse things
- n. an alloy of mercury with another metal (usually silver) used by dentists to fill cavities in teeth; except for iron and platinum all metals dissolve in mercury and chemists refer to the resulting mercury mixtures as amalgams
- Medieval Latin amalgama ("mercury alloy"), from Ancient Greek μάλαγμα (malagma, "gold"), from μαλάσσω (malassō, "to soften"), from μαλακός (malakos, "soft"). For the verb, compare French amalgamer. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, from Old French amalgame, from Medieval Latin amalgama, probably ultimately from Greek malagma, soft mass. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
“Kors: You wrote Spanglish, arguing that this amalgam is a valid form of expression, not a slumland corruption of two great languages.”
“Again, you will see I can repeat this experiment with another substance; for if I take a glass rod, and rub it with a piece of silk covered with what we call amalgam, look at the attraction which it has; how it draws the ball toward it; and then, as before, by quietly rubbing it through the hand, the attraction will be all removed again, to come back by friction with this silk.”
“Also of note is the fact that foods high in sulfur will exacerbate the odor according to Dr. Andrew Cutler who has written a manual on mercury detox from what he calls amalgam illness.”
“When the amalgam is heated, the mercury vaporizes, leaving the silver.”
“Every amalgam is a little different, of course; what unites these writers and separates them from the rest of the "literary" camp is the determinedly slow tempo of their prose.”
“Three treatises on chemical subjects from Aquinas 'pen have been preserved for us, and it is to him that we are said to owe the use, in the Western world at least, of the word amalgam, which he first employed in describing various chemical methods of metallic combination with mercury that were discovered in the search for the genuine transmutation of metals.”
“The compound of gold and quicksilver is a soft white substance known as amalgam, utterly unlike either metal.”
“For charging the retort, the water-tank is placed on a trolly; and standing upright on a stool inside the tank is placed the piña, or conical mass of silver amalgam, which is held together by being built up on a core-bar fitted with a series of horizontal disks.”
“The result of the process is not so much a circulation des élites as a réunion des élites, an amalgam, that is to say, of the two elements.”
“This holds fast whatever gold there may be and makes an amalgam, which is scraped off from time to time, and the quicksilver is driven from the gold by heat.”
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