Other forms: alloys, alloying, alloyed
An alloy is a metal mixed with other metals or elements until the result behaves like one new material. Brass is copper and zinc; steel is iron with a little carbon in it; the bronze in an old church bell is copper and tin.
Alloys exist to fix a weakness. Copper is soft, so bronze was made harder; iron rusts, so chromium went into stainless steel; a ring of pure gold would bend on your finger, so jewellers alloy gold with copper or silver and count the result in carats. The metals dissolve into each other rather than reacting into a new compound, so an alloy can be melted down and mixed to order. It is a verb as well: to alloy one metal with another. And the old adjective unalloyed means with nothing mixed in to spoil it — unalloyed joy, unalloyed praise.
1nounalloyA metal made by mixing a metal with one or more other metals or elements.
“The frame is a light aluminium alloy.”
2verbmixTo mix a metal with another metal or element.
“Gold is alloyed with copper to make it hard enough to wear.”
alloy is a metal.
Alloy is French all the way down: Middle French alloy or aloy, from Old French aloi, a noun taken from the verb aloiier, and behind them the Latin alligō. English kept the French spelling with its two l's and left the verb behind.
Latin
alligō
Old French
aloi
Middle French
alloy
English, today
alloy
Middle French alloy, aloy, from Old French aloi, from aloiier, from Latin alligō.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA