merger

• (Received Pronunciation, General Australian) IPA^(key): /ˈmɜː.d͡ʒə/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (General American, Canada) enPR: mûrʹjər, IPA^(key): /ˈmɝ.d͡ʒɚ/
• Rhymes: -ɜː(ɹ)dʒə(ɹ)
• Hyphenation: merg‧er

From merge +‎ -er.

merger (plural mergers)

1. One that merges.

From Anglo-Norman merger (verb used as noun).

merger (plural mergers)

1. The act or process of merging two or more parts into a single unit.

   Club mergers reduced the number of teams by half

2. (economics) The legal union of two or more corporations into a single entity, typically assets and liabilities being assumed by the buying party.
   • 2025 February 13, Juliana Liu and Junko Ogura, “Carmakers Nissan and Honda call off merger talks”, in CNN‎^[1]:

     The company has had some success with its EV offerings, such as the Nissan Leaf, an asset it brought to the table in merger discussions.
     EV development costs have created a powerful incentive for carmakers to explore mergers as a way to share the financial burden, according to analysts.

3. (law) An absorption of one or more estate(s) or contract(s) into one other, all being held by the same owner; of several counts of accusation into one judgement, etc.
4. (phonology) A type of sound change where two or more sounds merge into one.

   the cot-caught merger

   • 2025, Cid Swanenvleugel, The Pre-Roman Elements of the Sardinian Lexicon, page 394:

     If the presence of *θ in Sardinian words of Punic origin is indeed taken as evidence for an affricated realization of Semitic *z, this implies that the variety of Punic, that was the source of the Sardinian punicisms, did not exhibit the merger of Semitic *s, *z, *ṣ, *ś into /s/.

• combination
• fusion
• (linguistics): phonemic merger

• division

• mergence

• alliance
• buyout
• rollup
• sellout
• takeover

• “merger”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• William Dwight Whitney, Benjamin E[li] Smith, editors (1911), “merger”, in The Century Dictionary […], New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., →OCLC.