# merge

Pronunciation: say "MURJ" US /mɝd͡ʒ/, UK /mɜːd͡ʒ/

## Verb

1. To bring two or more separate things together so that they form a single whole.
   - Simple: To join two or more things together so they make one.
   - _The company plans to merge its two divisions into one department._
   - _After months of talks, the two unions merged into a single organization._
2. To blend gradually into something else until the boundary between them disappears.
   - Simple: To slowly mix into something else until you cannot tell them apart.
   - _On the on-ramp, drivers speed up and merge smoothly into the flow of highway traffic._
   - _Twilight slowly merged into darkness over the valley._

## Noun

3. The bringing together of several separate sources into a single combined whole.
   - Simple: The act of joining two or more things together into one.
   - _The software handled the merge of both databases automatically._
   - _Editors reviewed the merge before publishing the final version._
4. In the Minimalist Program, a fundamental operation of syntactic construction that combines two elements into a single larger unit.
   - Simple: In one theory of how sentences are built, a basic step that joins two words or word groups into a bigger one.
   - _Each merge takes two syntactic objects and forms a new constituent._
   - _Successive applications of merge build the hierarchical structure of a sentence._

## Origin

Borrowed from Latin mergo, meaning to dip, plunge, immerse, or sink down into something.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/merge (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).