- mix
- mix, mingle, commingle, blend, merge, coalesce, amalgamate, fuse denote to combine or become combined with resulting diffusion or interpenetration of particles, parts, or elements.Mix, the most comprehensive of these terms, need not imply loss of identities, but even when the ele-ments are distinguishable it suggests a homogeneous character in the product{
mix salt and pepper
}{mix colors for painting
}{oil and water do not mix
}{told in a style that mixes erudition and bawdiness— Sat. Review
}{manual and intellectual labor seldom mix well— Canby
}So far as they differ, mingle, rather than mix, implies that the constituent elements are distinguished in the product{the evil . . . strangely mingled with the good— Babbitt
}{mingling, as no other school of dramatists has done, the oratorical, the conversational, the elaborate and the simple— T. S. Eliot
}{he recognized in her look of mingled anxiety and pleasure the suspense of someone who introduces one part of life into another— Cheever
}Commingle may suggest a more intimate and often a harmonious union{commingled with the gloom of imminent war, the shadow of his loss drew like eclipse, darkening the world— Tennyson
}{the commingling in him of earthiness and sophistication— Pick
}Blend may be the equivalent of mix or mingle{a tale that blends their glory with their shame— Pope
}but usually it implies a mixing of harmonious or compatible things, a union so intimate as to obscure the individuality of the component parts and a sharing of their qualities by the resultant product{blended teas
}{offshore where sea and skyline blend in rain— Kipling
}{the faltering accents of the supplicant, blending the cadences of the liturgy with those of perplexed brooding thought— Edmund Wilson
}Merge still more distinctly implies the loss in the whole of the constituent elements or the complete absorption of one element in another{merge the private in the general good
}{Archer often wondered how, after forty years of the closest conjugality, two such merged identities ever separated themselves enough for anything as controversial as a talking-over— Wharton
}{all these people did not, however, merge anonymously into some homogeneous mass— Handlin
}Coalesce suggests a natural affinity for each other in the things merging and a resulting organic unity{all these descriptive details do not coalesce for us into the distinct image of a living woman— Babbitt
}{the vernaculars of the various groups began to coalesce into one recognized form of language somewhat distinct from the English of the mother country— Mathews
}Amalgamate implies a tendency to merge or draw together largely as a result of contact or association and sometimes suggests effective or harmonious union more than loss of identity{the Indian race . . . formed no part of the colonial communities, and never amalgamated with them— Taney
}{the "by-pass" engine tries to amalgamate the speed and the height characteristics of the pure jet with the fuel economy of the jet-prop— Charles Gardner
}Fuse stresses even more than blend and merge the loss of identity of each of the component elements, and, more than coalesce, the indissolubility of their union. It often implies a powerful cause which operates like heat melting and bringing into one mass disparate substances{the Scotch nation, nobles and commons, ministers and people, wonderfully fused together by fiery enthusiasm— Goldwin Smith
}{truth at white heat—the truth of terror and mystery and baleful beauty, fused into one flaming impression— Lowes
}Analogous words: *join, combine, unite, conjoinContrasted words: *separate, part, divide, sever, sunder
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
