Merger

How to spell merger

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce merger

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does merger mean?

1. nounThe combining of two or more companies or organisations into a single entity.

Merger in a sentence

• The merger of the two banks created the largest lender in the region.

• Regulators spent months reviewing the proposed merger before approving it.

Where does merger come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin verb mergere, which literally meant 'to dip', 'to plunge', or 'to sink' something into liquid. In medieval and Anglo-French legal language this idea of one thing sinking into another was applied to rights and estates: a lesser interest was said to be absorbed, or merged, into a greater one. English took up the noun form in the 1700s as a legal term, where 'merger' described the swallowing of one right or estate by another. From there it broadened in the 1800s and 1900s into the familiar commercial sense of two companies combining into one. The same Latin root still surfaces in 'submerge' and 'immerse', and remembering that the spelling keeps a hard middle 'g' followed by '-er' (not '-or') is the main thing that trips writers up.

How the word is built

• merg- (from Latin mergere: to dip, plunge, sink)
• -er (noun suffix marking the act or result)