merge

Formsmerges, merging, merged

Pluralmerges

1. 1
   verbtransitive or intransitive

   To bring two or more separate things together so that they form a single whole.

   The company plans to merge its two divisions into one department.

   After months of talks, the two unions merged into a single organization.

   Similarcombine, unite, blend, fuse, integrate

   Oppositedivide, split

   Note

   Behind the everyday idea of combining lies Latin mergō, "to dip, plunge, immerse": the Latin word pictured one thing sinking into another. Earlier writers lean on that image with merge in. Edmund Burke in 1791 speaks of merging all sentiment "in inordinate vanity," and De Quincey in 1835 has Whig and Tory "merged and swallowed up." The verb works both ways: you merge two things, or they merge. Its opposites are divide and split.

2. 2
   verbintransitive

   To blend gradually into something else until the boundary between them disappears.

   On the on-ramp, drivers speed up and merge smoothly into the flow of highway traffic.

   Twilight slowly merged into darkness over the valley.

   Similarblend, fade, melt, dissolve

   Oppositeseparate, diverge

3. 3
   nouncountable

   The bringing together of several separate sources into a single combined whole.

   The software handled the merge of both databases automatically.

   Editors reviewed the merge before publishing the final version.

   Similarcombination, consolidation, integration, amalgamation

   Oppositesplit

   Note

   A noun that names both an act and a place. In editing and software, a merge is the job of combining documents or data, and like any job it can succeed or fail. On the road, a merge is the spot where lanes come together, where the traffic sense of the verb happens. That is why drivers speak of accidents "at that traffic merge."

4. 4
   nouncountable or uncountable

   In the Minimalist Program, a fundamental operation of syntactic construction that combines two elements into a single larger unit.

   Each merge takes two syntactic objects and forms a new constituent.

   Successive applications of merge build the hierarchical structure of a sentence.

   Note

   A term of art that belongs to the Minimalist Program rather than to syntax in general. There it is a fundamental operation that is binary, taking two syntactic objects at a time. It can apply again to its own output, which is how hierarchical structure is built. Linguists often use it like a name, without an article, as in applications of merge, while still counting individual steps as each merge.

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