blend / blend/ • v. [tr.] mix (a substance) with another substance so that they combine together as a mass: blend the cornstarch with a tablespoon of water. ∎  [often as adj.] (blended) mix (different types of the same substance, such as tea, coffee, liquor, etc.) together so as to make a product of the desired quality: a blended whiskey. ∎  put or combine (abstract things) together: blend basic information with some scientific gardening. [as n.] (blending) a blending of romanticism with a more detached modernism. ∎  merge (a color) with another so that one is not clearly distinguishable from the other. ∎  form a harmonious combination: costumes, music, and lighting all blend together beautifully. ∎  (blend in/into) be unobtrusive or harmonious by being similar in appearance or behavior: she would have to employ a permanent bodyguard in the house, someone who would blend in.• n. a mixture of different things or people: knitting yarns in mohair blends. ∎  a mixture of different types or grades of a substance, such as tea, coffee, whiskey, etc. ∎  a combination of different abstract things or qualities: a blend of Marxist and anarchist ideas. ∎  a word made up of the parts of others and combining their meanings, for example motel from motor and hotel.

BLEND, also blend word, word blend, amalgam, fusion. A word formed by fusing elements of two other words, such as Lewis CARROLL's slithy from slimy and lithe. He called such forms portmanteau words, because they were like a two-part portmanteau bag. Blending is related to ABBREVIATION, derivation, and compounding, but distinct from them all. In the making of slithy it is hard to identify the precise contributions of the source words, but some blends follow clear-cut boundaries, as in Oxbridge, formed from Oxford and Cambridge. Others serve as slogans: Cocacolonization asserting that a country has been taken over by American values. Although blending is distinct from derivation, it may affect it. Forms like electrocute (1880s) bring electro and execute together so as to suggest a suffix -cute that means ‘kill by means of’. This element has not been exploited, but motorcade (c.1913) blends motor and cavalcade and has prompted aerocade, aquacade, and camelcade.

blend vb. XIII. At first mainly north.; prob. of Scand. orig. and due to blend- pres. stem, blēnd- pt. stem, of ON. blanda mix = OE., OS., Goth. blandan, OHG. blantan. Cf. BLIND vb.

Blend

a mixture which is mingled inseparably—Wilkes.

Examples: blend of coffee; of tea.

blend A surface introduced between two existing surfaces to smooth out the join between them. The blend may be a different type of surface from the two that it blends between.