# merger

Pronunciation: US say "MUR-jur" /ˈmɝ.d͡ʒɚ/; UK/AUS say "MUR-juh" /ˈmɜː.d͡ʒə/

## Noun

1. The legal joining of two or more corporations into a single entity, with the buying party usually taking on the assets and liabilities.
   - Simple: When two or more companies join together to form one bigger company.
   - _Shareholders voted to approve the merger between the two airlines._
   - _Regulators blocked the proposed merger on antitrust grounds._
2. The joining of two or more parts so that they form one whole.
   - Simple: The act of joining two or more parts together to make one.
   - _The merger of the two departments simplified the company's reporting structure._
   - _The engineers planned a careful merger of the old and new code into one system._
3. The absorption of one or more estates or contracts into another held by the same owner, or of several counts of accusation into a single judgment.
   - Simple: When two legal rights, estates, or contracts held by the same person combine into one.
   - _When the tenant bought the building, the merger of the lease into the freehold ended the tenancy._
   - _The judge ordered the merger of the lesser charge into the more serious one._
4. A kind of sound change in which two or more distinct sounds combine into a single sound.
   - Simple: A sound change where two or more different sounds become the same sound.
   - _The cot–caught merger has spread across much of North American English._
   - _Speakers who have undergone the merger pronounce the two vowels identically._
5. A person or thing that merges, bringing two or more things together into a single unit.
   - Simple: A person or thing that joins together with something else, or brings things into one.
   - _An aggressive merger forced his way into the lane without signaling._
   - _The software acts as a merger, blending two databases into a single file._

## Origin

**Meaning 5** — Formed from the verb "merge" combined with the suffix "-er".
**Meanings 1–4** — From Anglo-Norman "merger", a verb that was used as a noun.

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