混ざる
まざる · mazaru · JLPT N3 · verb-godan
to mingle with
🥣 混 = water 氵 + 昆 (crowd): things run together like water
Sounds a bit like mash-a-roo: things mashed together. 混ざる is intransitive, so things get mixed on their own. The transitive 混ぜる (mazeru) is when you do the mixing yourself.
混 — water radical 氵 + 昆 (kūn, phonetic)
A semantic-phonetic compound: 氵 (water) gives the meaning, while 昆 supplies the sound. The original sense was waters mingling or flowing together, which extended to 'mix, blend, confuse.' Modern uses like 混乱 (chaos) and 混合 (to mix) preserve this core idea of things merging.