1. [n]  a mixture containing two or more metallic elements or metallic and nonmetallic elements usually fused together or dissolving into each other when molten; "brass is an alloy of zinc and copper"
2. [n]  the state of impairing the quality or reducing the value of something
3. [v]  make an alloy of (metals)
4. [v]  lower in value by increasing the base-metal content; of metals

ALLOY is a 5 letter word that starts with A.

1. \Al*loy"\, n. [OE. alai, OF. alei, F. aloyer, to alloy,
   alier to ally. See {Alloy}, v. t.]
   1. Any combination or compound of metals fused together; a
      mixture of metals; for example, brass, which is an alloy
      of copper and zinc. But when mercury is one of the metals,
      the compound is called an amalgam.
   2. The quality, or comparative purity, of gold or silver;
      fineness.
   3. A baser metal mixed with a finer.
            Fine silver is silver without the mixture of any
            baser metal. Alloy is baser metal mixed with it.
                                                  --Locke.
   4. Admixture of anything which lessens the value or detracts
      from; as, no happiness is without alloy. ``Pure English
      without Latin alloy.'' --F. Harrison.
   

2. \Al*loy"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Alloyed}; p. pr. & vb. n.
   {Alloying}.] [F. aloyer, OF. alier, allier, later allayer,
   fr. L. aligare. See {Alloy}, n., {Ally}, v. t., and cf.
   {Allay}.]
   1. To reduce the purity of by mixing with a less valuable
      substance; as, to alloy gold with silver or copper, or
      silver with copper.
   2. To mix, as metals, so as to form a compound.
   3. To abate, impair, or debase by mixture; to allay; as, to
      alloy pleasure with misfortunes.
   

3. \Al*loy"\, v. t.
   To form a metallic compound.
         Gold and iron alloy with ease.           --Ure.
   

A language by Thanasis Mitsolides <[email protected]> which combines functional programming, object-oriented programming and logic programming ideas, and is suitable for massively parallel systems.

Evaluating modes support serial or parallel execution, eager evaluation or lazy evaluation, nondeterminism or multiple solutions etc. ALLOY is simple as it only requires 29 primitives in all (half of which are for object oriented programming support).

It runs on sparc.

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["The Design and Implementation of ALLOY, a Parallel Higher Level Programming Language", Thanasis Mitsolides <[email protected]>, PhD Thesis NYU 1990].