Melling

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Archaic verb meaning to mix together or to interfere in matters that do not concern you ; a small village in Lancashire in northwest England
2. Old-fashioned term for mixing things or meddling in affairs ; a small rural settlement in the county of Lancashire, England
3. A dated word for blending or intruding into something ; a little village located in Lancashire in the north of England

Etymology: Ancient Germanic speakers used the same root for meeting and for speaking. The Proto-Germanic "mahlą" meant "meeting, congress, speech," and its Old English descendant "mǣlan" meant "to speak, talk." Words for a public assembly were also words for the talk that happened there, and the legal sense of a dispute ("mǣl") and its agreed terms ("māl") grew out of the same stock. "Blackmail" and "vermählen," the German word for "to wed," belong to this family too, which shows how far the root spread. "Melling" comes from a different branch entirely. In Middle English, "mellen" and "medlen" were borrowed from Old French "meller" or "mesler," meaning "to mix, mingle." That French verb is the source of "meddle," which is a doublet of this word: two forms from one origin that took different paths into English. The sense of stirring things together is what the modern word keeps.

Synonyms: mixing, meddling, mingling

Antonyms: separating