alloy

Word family

• alloyed
  adjectiveC2
• unalloyed
  adjectiveC2

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

All four describe something made of more than one substance, but they are not interchangeable. An 'alloy' is specifically a metal product: two or more metals (or a metal plus a non-metal such as carbon) melted together to gain a useful new property — bronze, brass, steel. A 'mixture' is the most general word and can refer to anything from sand and salt to ideas; it carries no idea of melting or chemical change. A 'compound', in chemistry, is two or more elements joined by chemical bonds in fixed proportions, such as water (H₂O); unlike an alloy, the parts cannot easily be separated by physical means. An 'amalgam' is a special kind of alloy that contains mercury, and is the word a dentist will use for a silver-coloured tooth filling. So a steel beam is an alloy, a bowl of trail mix is a mixture, table salt is a compound, and a tooth filling is an amalgam.

Common collocations

Etymology

English 'alloy' came from Old French 'aloi', meaning the standard or quality of a coin's metal, which itself came from the Latin verb 'alligare', 'to bind to'. From the late 1300s the word in English referred to the proportion of cheaper metal mixed into gold or silver coins; over the next two centuries the meaning broadened to any deliberate mixing of metals to produce a new material. The figurative verb sense — adding something that lessens a feeling or pleasure — appeared in literary English in the 1600s and survives mainly in formal writing today.