coalesce

Verb

coalesce (third-person singular simple present coalesces, present participle coalescing, simple past and past participle coalesced)

1. To join into a single mass or whole.
   • The droplets coalesced into a puddle.
   • […] when a thing's own light and the light from something else coalescing into one on bright and smooth surfaces produce a form which yields a perception reversed from the way a thing normally looks.2005, Plato, translated by Lesley Brown and 2, Sophist

   Synonyms:

   amalgamate, combine, join, merge, unite, fuse

2. To form from different pieces or elements.
   • The puddle coalesced from the droplets as they ran together.
3. To bond pieces of metal into a continuous whole by liquefying parts of each piece, bringing the liquids into contact, and allowing the combined liquid to solidify.
4. To merge, to intermingle freely.
   • It was not a wise thing to enter a close clique, my good madam, until you had examined both them and yourself, and considered how far you were likely to coalesce.1842, [anonymous collaborator of Letitia Elizabeth Landon], chapter XXV, in Lady Anne Granard; or, Keeping up Appearances. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 27
   • We in the gay male community who are white […] will need to do conscious raising on racism with each other to effectively work with different racial groups. It follows that when attempting to coalesce with women that sexism conscious raising would need to occur.1981 August 1, Aurora Corona, “The Dead Line”, in Gay Community News, page 4
5. To convert a null value to a defined value.
   • You can improve the display by coalescing the ID columns. As I note in Chapter 9, the COALESCE expression takes on the value of the first non-null value in a list of values.2018, Allen G. Taylor, SQL For Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN