amalgamation

noun amalgamations

1. countable, uncountable The process of amalgamating; a mixture, merger or consolidation. In 1908 Sheng obtained imperial approval for the amalgamation of the Hanyang Ironworks and the Ta-yeh and P'ing-hsiang mines to form the Han-Yeh-P'ing Coal and Iron Company Limited (Han-Yeh-P'ing mei-t'ieh ch'ang-k'uang yu-hsien kung-ssu).
2. countable, uncountable The result of amalgamating; a mixture or alloy.
3. countable, specifically, uncountable The production of an alloy of mercury and another metal, especially used in antiquity to extract gold and silver from ores.
4. countable, obsolete, uncountable The intermarriage and interbreeding of different ethnicities or races. All the circumstances of William, on the great house farm, show him to have occupied a different position from the other slaves, and, certainly, there is nothing in the supposed hostility of slaveholders to amalgamation, to forbid the supposition that William Wilks was the son of Edward Lloyd.