▪ I. amalgamating, vbl. n.
(əˈmælgəmeɪtɪŋ)
[f. as prec. + -ing1.]
lit. The process of alloying with mercury; hence, of intimately combining different elements into one. (Mostly gerundial or attrib.)
| 1753 [See amalgamate v. 1.] 1789–96 Morse Amer. Geog. II. 301 Quicksilver..sent over to America for the purpose of amalgamating. 1859 Sevin Mexico in Jrnl. R.G.S. XXX. 48 Smelting and amalgamating works. |
▪ II. amalgamating, ppl. a.
(əˈmælgəmeɪtɪŋ)
[f. as prec. + -ing2.]
a. Combining different elements into one, uniting.
| 1809 Southey in Q. Rev. II. 34 The amalgamating spirit of polytheism. 1869 Daily News 2 Sept., These ten offices were merged in the Albert..a great amalgamating interest. |
b. Of a language: inflexional; characterized by the use of inflexions to express the grammatical relations of words.
| 1877 J. Peile Philology (ed. 2) 51 But you must not suppose that any one language is so absolutely ‘isolating’, ‘agglutinative’, or ‘amalgamating’, as to exclude all traces of the other methods. Ibid. 54 The second great group of amalgamating languages is called Indo-European. 1908 T. G. Tucker Introd. Nat. Hist. Lang. 87 Languages commonly spoken of as ‘inflexional’, sometimes as ‘organic’. We shall prefer to call them ‘amalgamating’. These modify the sense and relation of words by variations of the terminating elements. |