blend

noun

1. 1

   A mixture of two or more things.

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

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

2. 2

   A 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.

verb

1. 1

   To 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.

2. 2

   To be mingled or mixed.

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

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

   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.

   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.

3. 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.

Forms

plural

blends

past tense

blended, blent

past participle

blended, blent

present participle

blending

third person singular

blends