Today’s word of the day, thanks to Dictionary.com, is amalgamate. It is a verb that means “to mix or merge so as to make a combination; blend; unite” (https://www.dictionary.com/e/word-of-the-day/). The website adds these facts about the verb: “First recorded in 1635–45,” “Formed from amalgam, “an alloy of mercury with another metal,” and “Amalgam came from the combination of Arabic al, ‘the,’ and malgham, from Greek málagma, ‘softening agent.’”

According to Etymonline, the word entered the language in the “1650s, ‘mix (a metal) with mercury,’ a back-formation from amalgamation, or else from the obsolete adjective amalgamate (1640s) from amalgam (q.v.). Originally in metallurgy. The figurative transitive sense of ‘to unite’ (races, etc.) is attested from 1802; the intransitive sense of ‘to combine, unite into one body’ is from 1797” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=amalgamate). Amalgam goes back even further, to “c. 1400, ‘a blend of mercury with another metal; soft mass formed by chemical manipulation,’ from Old French amalgame or directly from Medieval Latin amalgama, ‘alloy of mercury (especially with gold or silver),’ c. 1300, an alchemists’ word, probably from Arabic al-malgham ‘an emollient poultice or unguent for sores (especially warm)’ [Francis Johnson, A Dictionary of Persian, Arabic, and English], which is itself perhaps from Greek malagma ‘softening substance,’ from malassein ‘to soften,’ from malakos ‘soft’ (from PIE *meldh-, from root *mel- (1) ‘soft’)” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=amalgamate).

Here we have another example of broadening or generalization, a word which means something narrow and specific but then comes to mean something more metaphorically.

According to On This Day, Parker Brothers began selling Monopoly on this date in 1935. The official history of the game says that it was invented by Charles Darrow, who sold it to Parker Brothers. But the history of the game is actually a lot more complicated.

“In the late 1800s, a young woman named Elizabeth Magie was introduced to the writings of Henry George by her father. She eventually became one of many people who took on the task of trying to teach others what she had learned from studying Progress and Poverty and George’s other works” (https://www.henrygeorge.org/dodson_on_monopoly.htm). Henry George (1839-1897) was a political economist who came up with a somewhat unique economic philosophy, that while individuals should own the value of their labor, the land, including natural resources, should be shared equally by everyone. Magie wanted to share Georgism with others, and she apparently enjoyed inventing games. One of these games was The Landlord Game, which actually had two different versions, one with taxes and one without.

Magie shared the game with some of her friends in Arden, DE, and one of those friends eventually became an economics professor at Penn, where he used Magie’s game to teach some principles of economics. According to Burton R. Wolfe, in The Monopolization of Monopoly, “As the students and single taxers played the game, they began a process … of altering the rules. The main change was that instead of merely paying rent when landing on a property block, the players could hold an auction to buy it. They also made their own game boards so that they could replace the properties designated by Lizzie Maggie with properties in their own cities and states; this made playing more realistic. As they drew or painted their own boards, usually on linen or oil cloth, they change the title ‘Landlord’s Game’ to ‘Auction Monopoly’ and then just ‘Monopoly’” (https://www.henrygeorge.org/dodson_on_monopoly.htm).

The henrygeorge website adds this: “Other writers note the game was played by students at Princeton University and Haverford College. Changes were made to the board design, gathering the properties into groups, allowing buildings to be added to the locations and increasing the amount of rent charged based on the number of like properties owned. By the late 1920s, the version of the game being played by college students and others had evolved quite a bit from Elizabeth’s design. The game was now generally referred to as ‘Monopoly.’ A young student at Williams College (Reading, Pennsylvania) produced a commercial version under the name ‘Finance,’ but the game was essentially Monopoly. Then, a woman named Ruth Hoskins who learned the game in Indianapolis moved to Atlantic City, New Jersey and supposedly created the version that included the Atlantic City street names.”

The next step was that some of these players shared the game with Charles Darrow and his wife. Darrow, supposedly, asked if the friend would write up the rules to the game, and the friend did so. Darrow then took the game to Parker Brothers and made a mint on it, although Parker Brothers did pay Elizabeth Magie $500 for the rights to her version of the game.

My daughter-in-law loves “Monopoly” and has many different versions of the game: Star Wars, Harry Potter, Spiderman, and many, many more. The game seems to have come full circle. Originally players of the game altered the names of the properties to make it fit better their circumstances, and now companies are altering the names of the properties for commercial reasons.

In other words, the game was created when people amalgamated their ideas about it, and now companies are amalgamating it with other cultural icons.

The image today is a version of Elizabeth Magie’s original game, “The Landlord’s Game” (https://www.henrygeorge.org/dodson_on_monopoly.htmhttps://www.henrygeorge.org/dodson_on_monopoly.htm).