blend

plural blends

1. A mixture of two or more things.

   Their music has been described as a blend of jazz and heavy metal.

   1 more example

   Our department has a good blend of experienced workers and young promise.

   Synonyms: combination, mix, mixture

2. human sciencesA word formed by combining two other words; a portmanteau word.

   Blends, also known as portmanteau words, are not an original part of English. That is, none occur in Old or Middle English, nor even in Elizabethan English, with the earliest known example being the rare and now obsolete term tomaxe, a blend of tomahawk and axe.

   2018, James Lambert, “A multitude of ‘lishes’: The nomenclature of hybridity”, in English World-Wide, page 10

   Synonyms: frankenword, portmanteau, portmanteau word, portmantologism

present singular third person blends · participle present blending · participle past blended · past blended · participle past poetic blent · past poetic blent

1. transitiveTo mingle; to mix; to unite intimately; to pass or shade insensibly into each other.

   To make hummus you need to blend chickpeas, olive oil, lemon juice and garlic.

   Synonyms: fuse, homogenize, inosculate, uniformize, admix, amalgamate, bemingle, combine

2. intransitiveTo be mingled or mixed.

   There is a tone of solemn and sacred feeling that blends with our conviviality.

   1819 June 23 – 1820 September 13, Geoffrey Crayon [pseudonym; Washington Irving], “(please specify the title)”, in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., New York, N.Y.: […] C[ornelius] S. Van Winkle, […], →OCLC

   3 more examples

   To feel no other breezes than are blown / Through its tall woods with high romances blent

   1817, John Keats, Happy is England!

   Sepia Delft tiles surrounded the fireplace, their crudely drawn Biblical scenes in faded cyclamen blending with the pinkish pine, while above them, instead of a mantelshelf, there was an archway high enough to form a balcony with slender balusters and a tapestry-hung wall behind.

   1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 3, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC

   Earless ghost swift moths become “invisible” to echolocating bats by forming mating clusters close[…]above vegetation and effectively blending into the clutter of echoes that the bat receives from the leaves and stems around them. Many insects probably use this strategy, which is a close analogy to crypsis in the visible world—camouflage and other methods for blending into one’s visual background.

   2013 May-June, William E. Conner, “An Acoustic Arms Race”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3, pages 206–7

3. obsoleteTo pollute by mixture or association; to spoil or corrupt; to blot; to stain.

   These stormes, which now his beauty blend, Shall turn to calmes.

   1595, Edmunde Spenser [i.e., Edmund Spenser], “[Amoretti.] Sonnet LXII”, in Amoretti and Epithalamion. […], London: […] [Peter Short] for William Ponsonby, →OCLC