"amalgam" in the noun sense
1. amalgam, dental amalgam
an alloy of mercury with another metal (usually silver) used by dentists to fill cavities in teeth except for iron and platinum all metals dissolve in mercury and chemists refer to the resulting mercury mixtures as amalgams
2. amalgam
a combination or blend of diverse things
"his theory is an amalgam of earlier ideas"
Source: WordNet® (An amazing lexical database of English)
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