alloy

v. mix metals; corrupt by adding other substances; reduce in value or quality

n. mixture of metals; precious metal (i.e. gold or silver) mixed with an inferior metal

An alloy is a homogeneous hybrid of two or more elements, at least one of which is a metal, and where the resulting material has metallic properties. The resulting metallic substance usually has different properties (sometimes substantially different) from those of its components.
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Noun
1. a mixture containing two or more metallic elements or metallic and nonmetallic elements usually fused together or dissolving into each other when molten; "brass is an alloy of zinc and copper"
(synonym) metal
(hypernym) mixture
(hyponym) heavy metal
(substance-meronym) solid solution, primary solid solution
(derivation) debase
2. the state of impairing the quality or reducing the value of something
(synonym) admixture
(hypernym) impurity, impureness
Verb
1. lower in value by increasing the base-metal content
(synonym) debase
(hypernym) devalue
(derivation) metal
(classification) metallurgy
2. make an alloy of
(hypernym) blend, flux, mix, conflate, commingle, immix, fuse, coalesce, meld, combine, merge
(classification) chemistry, chemical science

(v. t.)
To reduce the purity of by mixing with a less valuable substance; as, to alloy gold with silver or copper, or silver with copper.
  

(v. t.)
To mix, as metals, so as to form a compound.
  

(v. t.)
To form a metallic compound.
  

(v. t.)
To abate, impair, or debase by mixture; to allay; as, to alloy pleasure with misfortunes.
  

(v. t.)
The quality, or comparative purity, of gold or silver; fineness.
  

(v. t.)
Any combination or compound of metals fused together; a mixture of metals; for example, brass, which is an alloy of copper and zinc. But when mercury is one of the metals, the compound is called an amalgam.
  

(v. t.)
Admixture of anything which lessens the value or detracts from; as, no happiness is without alloy.
  

(v. t.)
A baser metal mixed with a finer.
  

<language> A language by Thanasis Mitsolides mitsolid@cs.nyu.edu which combines functional programming, object-oriented programming and logic programming ideas, and is suitable for massively parallel systems.
Evaluating modes support serial or parallel execution, eager evaluation or lazy evaluation, nondeterminism or multiple solutions etc. ALLOY is simple as it only requires 29 primitives in all (half of which are for object oriented programming support).
It runs on SPARC.
ftp://cs.nyu.edu/pub/local/alloy/.
["The Design and Implementation of ALLOY, a Parallel Higher Level Programming Language", Thanasis Mitsolides mitsolid@cs2.nyu.edu, PhD Thesis NYU 1990].
(1991-06-11)