blend

From Middle English blenden, either from Old English blandan, blondan, ġeblandan, ġeblendan[1] or from Old Norse blanda (“to blend, mix”)[2] (which was originally a strong verb with the present-tense stem blend[3]; compare blendingr (“a blending, a mixture; a half-breed”)[4]), whence also Danish blande, or from a blend of the Old English and Old Norse terms; both ultimately from Proto-Germanic *blandaną (“to blend; mix; combine”).[5] Compare Middle Dutch blanden (“to mix”), Gothic 𐌱𐌻𐌰𐌽𐌳𐌰𐌽 (blandan), Old Church Slavonic блєсти (blesti, “to go astray”).

• enPR: blĕnd, IPA^(key): /blɛnd/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛnd
• Homophone: blende

blend (plural blends)

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. (linguistics) A word formed by combining two other words; a grammatical contamination, portmanteau word.

   The word brunch is a blend of the words breakfast and lunch.

• (mixture): combination, mix, mixture
• (in linguistics): frankenword, portmanteau, portmanteau word

blend (third-person singular simple present blends, present participle blending, simple past and past participle blended or (poetic) blent)

1. (transitive) 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. (intransitive) To be mingled or mixed.
   • (Can we date this quote?) Irving

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

   • (Can we date this quote?) {{w:John Keats|Keats}}

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

   • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 3, in The China Governess‎:

     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.

   • 2013 May-June, William E. Conner, “An Acoustic Arms Race”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 3, page 206-7:

     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. (obsolete) To pollute by mixture or association; to spoil or corrupt; to blot; to stain.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Spenser to this entry?)

• For quotations of use of this term, see Citations:blend.

• (to mix; to unite intimately): See also Thesaurus:homogenize and Thesaurus:mix

• blender
• blended
• blend in
• blendingly

• L-bend

• blenk (Ripuarian; now chiefly western dialects)
• blond, blönd (Eifel)

From Old High German blind, northern variant of blint.

• IPA^(key): /blent/

blend (masculine blenne or blende, feminine blenn or blend, comparative blenner or blender, superlative et' blendste)

1. (Moselle Franconian, some dialects of Ripuarian) blind; unable to see

• The inflected forms with -nn- are used in those dialects in which blend is the inherited form (Moselle Franconian, southern Ripuarian). The forms with -nd- are used in Ripuarian to the extent to which inherited blenk has been replaced with blend.

blend

1. first-person singular present indicative of blenden
2. imperative of blenden