Meaning of accretion | Babel Free

Definitions

1. Increase by natural growth, especially the gradual increase of organic bodies by the internal addition of matter; organic growth; also, the amount of such growth.
   also, figuratively, uncountable
2. (Gradual) increase by an external addition of matter; (countable) an instance of this.
   uncountable
3. The process by which material is added to a geological feature; specifically, to a tectonic plate at a subduction zone.
   countable, uncountable
4. Followed by of: external addition of matter to a thing which causes it to grow, especially in amount or size.
   also, figuratively, uncountable
5. The process of separate particles aggregating or coalescing together; concretion; (countable) a thing formed in this manner.
   uncountable
6. The formation of planets, stars, and other celestial bodies by the aggregating of matter drawn together by gravity; also, the growth of a celestial body through this process.
   countable, uncountable
7. Something gradually added to or growing on a thing externally.
   countable, figuratively
8. A substance which has built up on the surface of an object, rather than become embedded in it.
   countable, figuratively, uncountable
9. Increase in property by the addition of other property to it (for example, gain of land by alluvion (“the deposition of sediment by a river or sea”) or dereliction (“recession of water from the usual watermark”), or entitlement to the products of the property such as interest on money); or by the property owner acquiring another person’s ownership rights; accession; (countable) an instance of this.
   uncountable
10. Increase of an inheritance to an heir or legatee due to the share of a co-heir or co-legatee being added to it, because the latter person is legally unable to inherit the share.
    uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“Warwick was unable to perceive much change in the market-house. […] There might have been a slight accretion of the moss and lichen on the shingled roof.”

“The immense accretion of flesh which had descended on her in middle life like a flood of lava on a doomed city had changed her from a plump active little woman with a neatly-turned foot and ankle into something as vast and august as a natural phenomenon.”

“Near-synonym: accumulation”

“A mineral augments not by growth, but by accretion.”

“[…] Plants doe nouriſh; Inanimate Bodies doe not: They haue an Accretion, but no Alimentation.”

“God hath from the beginning made all the Kindes of Hard, and Heavie, and Diaphanous Bodies that are, and of ſuch Figure and magnitude as he thought fit; but hovv ſmall ſoever, they may by accretion become greater in the Mine, or perhaps by generation, though vve knovv not hovv.”

“Suddenly starting from a proposition, exactly and sharply defined, in terms of utmost simplicity and clearness, he rejected the forms of customary logic, and by a crystalline process of accretion, built up his ocular demonstrations in forms of gloomiest and ghastliest grandeur, or in those of the most airy and delicious beauty—so minutely and distinctly, yet so rapidly, that the attention which was yielded to him was chained till it stood among his wonderful creations—till he himself dissolved the spell, and brought his hearers back to common and base existence, by vulgar fancies or exhibitions of the ignoblest passion.”

“Our social life is largely a form, a whirl, a commercial relation, a display, a duty, the result of external accretion, not of internal growth. It is not in any sense a unity, nor an expression of the best intellectual life, which seeks other channels.”

“Two-story log buildings, in the business part of town, brought him from forty to fifty thousand dollars apiece. These fresh accretions of capital were immediately invested in other ventures.”

“Written by accretion rather than from a single author's interpretation Wikipedia has a neo-positivist mania for facts that devalues interpretation in depth, yet in matching [Otto] Friedrich's review against [Vladimir] Nabokov it also shows that it is far from neutral.”

“The systematic accretion of violence and complicity that engulfed whole populations at extreme velocity invoked a kind of bewilderment that ended in paralysis, even for many of the greatest minds of the twentieth century.”

“[W]hile ſome fevv grevv rich by turning Money in their ovvn Banks, there vvas a falſe Appearance of VVealth vvithin, but no Accretion of Riches from abroad.”

“The accretion of particles forms a solid mass.”

“[T]he vvhole Country of Holland ſeems to be an Accretion partly by the Sea, partly by the River Rhine.”

“She had no fear of the shadows; her sole idea seemed to be to shun mankind—or rather that cold accretion called the world, which, so terrible in the mass, is so unformidable, even pitiable, in its units.”

“This theory, known as pebble accretion, is reshaping how scientists think about the early solar system. […] "In many ways, pebble accretion is the most efficient way of adding mass to a body," says Lambrechts.”

“accretion of ice”

“[T]hoſe places, vvhich vvere formerly filled vvith VVood, have buried the fallen Trees three, four, or five foot deep in the ground, by an accretion or cover of Earth, derived to them ſometimes by Alluvions or Floods, […]”

“If therefore it is admitted that a large part of the narrative of Dionysius [of Halicarnassus] is false, what good ground have we for believing the rest? Assuming however that we are to strip off all the subordinate parts of his narrative, as a later accretion, and to retain only a nucleus of the leading facts, do we find that these can be safely accepted, and that he is confirmed in them by the agreement of the other historians? So far is this from being the case, that the accounts transmitted to us differ widely in the material points of the transaction.”

“Accretions of dirt on clothing are often left in place by conservators because they can provide additional details about the artefact’s importance or history.”

“Pure Lust is a double-edged analysis of the evolution of feminist spiritual system. In Pure Lust Daly attempts to pare away the accretions of patriarchal ideology and reveal the fundamental elements of emerging feminist philosophy.”

CEFR level