Accretion

/əˈkɹiːʃn̩/ · noun

Meaning

(uncountable, also figurative) 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..

Definitions by Sense

1. (uncountable, also figurative) 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.
2. (uncountable) (Gradual) increase by an external addition of matter; (countable) an instance of this.
3. (uncountable, also figurative) Followed by of: external addition of matter to a thing which causes it to grow, especially in amount or size.
4. (uncountable) The process of separate particles aggregating or coalescing together; concretion; (countable) a thing formed in this manner.
5. (countable, chiefly figurative) Something gradually added to or growing on a thing externally.
6. (property law, uncountable) 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.
7. (inheritance law, uncountable) 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.

Example Sentences

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.

Synonyms for accretion

Antonyms for accretion

Related Words

Word Forms

• accretions

Usage Notes

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