Blend

How to spell blend

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce blend

What does blend mean?

1. verbTo mix two or more things together so that they combine smoothly into one.
2. nounA mixture produced by combining different things in set proportions.

Blend in a sentence

• verb

  The recipe asks you to blend the butter and sugar until smooth.

• noun

  This coffee is a blend of beans from three different regions.

• verb

  Good interior design will blend old furniture with modern fittings.

• noun

  The jumper is a soft blend of wool and cotton.

Where does blend come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word comes from Old English blandan, meaning 'to mix' or 'to mingle together', and was reinforced by the closely related Old Norse blanda, which carried the same sense of stirring things into one mass. Both descend from a common Germanic ancestor, and the modern form is thought to owe its 'e' vowel to the Old Norse influence brought by Scandinavian settlers. By the time it settled into Middle English, it had taken on its familiar spelling and meaning of combining substances so thoroughly that they form a single whole. The same family gave us 'bland', which originally described something smoothly mixed and only later came to mean dull or without sharp flavour. Because the word is short and follows a regular consonant pattern, the spelling has stayed remarkably stable for centuries.

How the word is built

• blend (single Germanic root meaning to mix or mingle); no separable prefix or suffix