Other forms: fusions
Fusion is joining light atomic nuclei to release energy, as the sun does. Nuclear fusion, fusion power, a fusion reactor.
It is the opposite of fission, which splits heavy nuclei and is what current nuclear power stations do. Fusion produces far more energy and almost no long-lived waste, and confining a plasma hot enough to sustain it has taken about seventy years so far. Elsewhere, fusion means a blending: fusion cooking, a fusion of styles. Note fuse, both the verb and the safety device.
1nounfusionJoining light atomic nuclei to release energy.
“Fusion has been about thirty years away for roughly seventy years.”
2nounblendingA blending of different things.
“Her music is a fusion of jazz and traditional African rhythms.”
fusion is a joining or melting.
The Latin fundo is to melt or pour. Fusion is two things melted together until they are one.
hooks ontomelt
Latin fusio means a pouring or melting, from fundere, to pour — the same verb as in confuse and refund. Fusion is melting things into one, and the nuclear sense is a metaphor from the foundry.
Proto-Indo-European
*ǵʰewd-
Latin
fūsiōnem
Middle French
fusion
English, today
fusion
Built from
First appears c. 1555, in a translation by Richard Eden. From Middle French fusion, from Latin fūsiōnem (the accusative of fūsiō), from fusus, past participle of fundō (“to pour; to melt”) (see also found). a doublet of foison.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA