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Clue is: "Join together, merge (5)"
E-I-E.

Good morning, Jim, you've made an early start! ELIDE.

Hi Caravaggio. Actually where I am it was early afternoon when I posted. It's early evening now. I thought of ELIDE, but it means delete or omit, not join. The obvious answer would be UNITE, but that doesn't square with 47 across ("general agreement") which has to be CONSENSUS. Any thoughts?

The answer is "elide"

It's one of those where it depends on which dictionary you use !!

Try AskOxford.com and you will get:

• verb 1 omit (a sound or syllable) when speaking. 2 join together; merge


Whether that makes it a good clue or not is, obviously, debatable. As most crossword puzzlers know, Chambers is the favourite reference for most compilers, and many definitions given in there are not to be found elsewhere.

Thank you Big Dave and Jim. Yes, it's a curious word isn't it? It appears to have contradictory meanings. I hope you're getting a tan wherever you are, Jim. There's no chance of getting one in the UK at the moment...

I think it only means "join together" in the context of joining two words or parts of words, for example "gonna" is joining "going" and "to" by elision, or omission.
Foreign students of English tend to know more about this than we do, because we have been used to the construct. I only learned about "phrasal verbs" from working with some Spanish people - I had never realised that they were a problem!!

Thanks Dave and Caravaggio. ELIDE it is. Not much chance of a tan here in Thailand at the moment, Caravaggio. We're suffering the coldest weather in 60 years; a number of people have died from hypothermia. I'm sitting in my condo wearing a fleece even though the thermometer reads 22C.