amalgam

1. 1.

   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

   Synonymsdental amalgam

   Broaderalloy
2. 2.

   a combination or blend of diverse things

   “his theory is an amalgam of earlier ideas”

   Broadercombination

Other forms of amalgam

plural

amalgams·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about amalgam

What does amalgam mean?

amalgam means "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". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in amalgam?

amalgam has 3 syllables: a-mal-gam. The stress falls on "mal". In IPA it is /əˈmælɡəm/.

What is another word for amalgam?

Close synonyms include dental amalgam. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is amalgam a common word?

amalgam is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.