1. amalgam, dental amalgam -- (an alloy of mercury with another metal (usually silver) used by dentists to fill cavities in teeth; except for iron and platinum all metals dissolve in mercury and chemists refer to the resulting mercury mixtures as amalgams)
2. amalgam -- (a combination or blend of diverse things; "his theory is an amalgam of earlier ideas")
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"They are coiners on a large scale, and have used the machine to form the amalgam which has taken the place of silver.. - from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle