melting pot

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

• n. A container in which a substance is melted.
• n. A place where immigrants of different cultures or races form an integrated society: "Canadians . . . liked to think of their country as a mosaic rather than a melting pot” ( Kenneth McNaught).

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

• n. A crucible, or similar pot, used to fuse mixtures of metals etc.
• n. A place where many divergent things (often races or cultures, but also talents) come together and are homogenized.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

• n. A vessel in which anything is melted; a crucible.
• n. A place where people of different backgrounds become similar in culture. The United States has often been referred to as a melting pot, though the differences in cultures of recently arrived immigrants persists beyond the generation of immigrants.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

• n. A crucible.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• n. a vessel made of material that does not melt easily; used for high temperature chemical reactions
• n. an environment in which many ideas and races are socially assimilated