1728 T. Vernon Chancery Cases II. 90 The Plaintiff..insisted that the Term was merged in the Daughter, as being also Heir at Law. The Court upon the Hearing relieved against the Merger.

1729 G. Jacob New Law-dict. at Merger If a Lessor, who hath the Fee, marries with the Lessee for Years; this is no Merger, because [etc.].

1818 H. T. Colebrooke Treat. Obligations & Contracts 216 Where there is a confusion of rights, where debtor and creditor become one,..an immediate merger takes place.

1839 Penny Cycl. XV. 109/1 Estates tail are not subject to merger.

1861 T. E. May Constit. Hist. Eng. (1863) I. v. 240 This increase is exhibited by the existing peerage alone—notwithstanding the extinction or merger of numerous titles in the interval.

1894 Times 16 Apr. 3/3 That depended upon whether the judgment did operate as a merger of the action on the guarantee.

1851 B. C. Howard Rep. Supreme Court U.S. 10 390 The moment, then, the stock was destroyed by the merger of that company in another,..its distinctive character was destroyed.

1889 Boston Jrnl. 17 Apr. 4/3 Ample powers of consolidation and merger, transfer and absorption of stock and kindred franchises are given.

1902 Westm. Gaz. 7 May 5/1 The Attorney-General is watching the steamship merger closely.

1904 Daily News 7 Apr. 6 A week or two ago a merger between two railways was forcibly dissolved by the judges of the Supreme Court.

1941 Jrnl. Polit. Econ. 49 835 In the second period there was a similar wave of mergers and acquisitions, causing the disappearance of many concerns in manufacturing.

1974 P. G. Wodehouse Aunts aren't Gentlemen ii. 10 I had once asked her to marry me... In due season I suggested a merger. But apparently I was not the type, and no business resulted.

1994 Wall St. Jrnl. 17 May a14/3 Later, she did move to the mergers and acquisitions group and continued to work closely with him.

1881 Athenæum No. 2791. 556 A very little additional lapse of time witnessed the merger of the diocesan in the statesman.

1898 Encycl. Laws Eng. X. 622 The two latter [officers] have ceased to exist, the former of the two upon merger of the duties with those of the Queen's Remembrancer.

1921 J. Galsworthy To Let 288 In the union of the great-grand-daughter of ‘Superior Dosset’ with the heir of a ninth baronet was the outward and visible sign of that merger of class in class which buttresses the political stability of a realm.

1989 E. S. Person Love & Fateful Encounters vi. 160 No love can be sustained without those periodic moments in which the lovers feel they have achieved merger—a sense that they are one.

1994 Coloradoan (Fort Collins) 6 Feb. b4/4 It was rhythm, harmony and the merger of styles that made Cole's version different from Anita Bryant's straight-laced approach.

1966 Amer. Speech 41 121 We would..stress the fact that merger has taken place between /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ in the speech of the Seattle area, and that the sounds of an /ɑ/ phoneme are what one hears in the pronunciation of the group under consideration.

1972 W. Labov Lang. in Inner City i. 20 The existence of homonyms on the level of a phonetic output does not prove that the speakers have the same sets of mergers on the more abstract level which corresponds to the spelling system.

1994 Lang. in Society 23 312 The ‘Canadian’ merger of the vowels in hawk and hock appears in only 17% of Vancouver young women.

1970 N.Y. Times 17 May iii. 13/1 Richard W. McLaren, the Justice Department's antitrust chief..has suggested the trend toward what he termed ‘merger mania’ may have peaked early last year.

1983 Times 12 Apr. 17/8 Many of these bids are the harmless, even beneficial, eruptions of market forces. But mergermania is not good.

1993 USA Weekend 31 Jan. 7/1 We lose a little bit of our state's scarce history every time such a name slips into oblivion through merger mania.

1846 J. E. Worcester Universal Dict. Eng. Lang. Merger, he or that which merges.

1928 John Blunt 11 Aug. 7/1 The main features of his personality, however, are first his exploits as a merger of businesses.