Library / English Dictionary

COALESCE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Mix together different elements

Example:

The colors blend well

Synonyms:

blend; coalesce; combine; commingle; conflate; flux; fuse; immix; meld; merge; mix

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Hypernyms (to "coalesce" is one way to...):

change integrity (change in physical make-up)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "coalesce"):

gauge (mix in specific proportions)

absorb (cause to become one with)

meld; melt (lose its distinct outline or shape; blend gradually)

blend in; mix in (cause (something) to be mixed with (something else))

accrete (grow together (of plants and organs))

conjugate (unite chemically so that the product is easily broken down into the original compounds)

admix (mix or blend)

alloy (make an alloy of)

syncretise; syncretize (become fused)

Sentence frames:

Something ----s
Somebody ----s
Something is ----ing PP
Somebody ----s PP

Derivation:

coalescency; coalition (the union of diverse things into one body or form or group; the growing together of parts)

coalition (the state of being combined into one body)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Fuse or cause to grow together

Classified under:

Verbs of touching, hitting, tying, digging

Hypernyms (to "coalesce" is one way to...):

merge; unify; unite (become one)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "coalesce"):

clog; clot (coalesce or unite in a mass)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something

Derivation:

coalescence; coalescency; coalition (the union of diverse things into one body or form or group; the growing together of parts)

Credits

 Context examples: 

They found there was so much iron and phosphate that the particles coalesced into clumps where these microbes could not get to them.

(Scientists report skyrocketing phyotplankton population in aftermath of Kīlauea eruption, Wikinews)

The material went into orbit around Pluto and coalesced under its own gravity to form Charon and several smaller moons.

(Cracks in Pluto's moon could indicate it once had an underground ocean, NASA)

A form of herpetic keratitis characterized by the formation of small vesicles which break down and coalesce to form recurring dendritic ulcers, characteristically irregular, linear, branching, and ending in knoblike extremities.

(Dendritic Keratitis, NLM, Medical Subject Headings)

Such an impact would also be expected to have generated a ring of material around Mars that later coalesced into Phobos and Deimos; this explains in part why those moons are made of a mix of native and non-Martian material.

(Ancient Asteroid Impact Explains Martian Geological Mysteries, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

One popular theory is that such an object could arise when two comets – even two compositionally distinct comets – melded together under a low velocity collision during the Solar System's formation billions of years ago, when small building blocks of rocky and icy debris coalesced to eventually create planets.

(Rosetta Comet May Be a Contact Binary, NASA)

The height of the trees and the thickness of the boles exceeded anything which I in my town-bred life could have imagined, shooting upwards in magnificent columns until, at an enormous distance above our heads, we could dimly discern the spot where they threw out their side-branches into Gothic upward curves which coalesced to form one great matted roof of verdure, through which only an occasional golden ray of sunshine shot downwards to trace a thin dazzling line of light amidst the majestic obscurity.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)