accretion
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /əˈkɹiːʃn̩/
enpr: ŭkrēshən
ipa: /əˈkɹiʃən/
rhymes: -iːʃən
Forms: form: accretions
Etymology: PIE word
 *h₂éd
Learned borrowing from Latin accrētiō (“increase, increment”) + English -ion (suffix forming nouns denoting actions or processes, or their results). Accrētiō is derived from accrēscō (“to grow, increase”) + -tiō (suffix forming nouns denoting actions or processes, or their results); and accrēscō is from ac- (a variant of ad-, prefix meaning ‘to’, or having an intensifying effect) + crēscō (“to grow; to increase”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ḱer- (“to cause to grow; to grow; to nourish”)).
Doublet of accrue, crescent, and increase.
Senses: examples: text: 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.
ref: 1900, Charles W[addell] Chesnutt, chapter I, in The House Behind the Cedars, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company […], →OCLC, page 3:
text: 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.
ref: 1920, Edith Wharton, chapter IV, in The Age of Innocence, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC, book I, page 25:
synonyms: accrescence
antonyms: nonaccretion
glosses: 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.
examples: text: Near-synonym: accumulation
text: A mineral augments not by growth, but by accretion.
text: […] Plants doe nouriſh; Inanimate Bodies doe not: They haue an Accretion, but no Alimentation.
ref: 1627 (indicated as 1626), Francis [Bacon], “VII. Century. [Experiments in Consort, Touching the Affinities, and Differences, betweene Plants and Inanimate Bodies.]”, in Sylua Syluarum: Or A Naturall Historie. In Ten Centuries. […], London: […] William Rawley […]; [p]rinted by J[ohn] H[aviland] for William Lee […], →OCLC, paragraph 602, page 154:
text: 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.
ref: 1678, Thomas Hobbes, “Of Gravity and Gravitation”, in Decameron Physiologicum: Or, Ten Dialogues of Natural Philosophy. […], London: […] J[ames] C[ottrel] for W[illiam] Crook[e] […], →OCLC, page 94:
text: 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.
ref: 1849 October 9, Rufus Wilmot Griswold, “Edgar Poe”, in N[athaniel] Parker Willis, Hurry-graphs; or, Sketches of Scenery, Celebrities and Society, Taken from Life, 2nd edition, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner, published 1851, →OCLC, page 241:
text: 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.
ref: 1890 August, Amelia Gere Mason, “The Women of the French Salons: The Salons of the Eighteenth Century”, in The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, volume XVIII (New Series; volume XL overall), number 4, New York: The Century Company, →OCLC, page 596, column 1:
text: 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.
ref: 1910 October, Jack London, chapter XI, in Burning Daylight, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, →OCLC, part I, page 106:
text: 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.
ref: 2012 March 16, Edward Tenner, “Why Wikipedia's Fans Shouldn't Gloat”, in James Bennet, editor, The Atlantic, Washington, D.C.: The Atlantic Monthly Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 03 Jun 2023:
text: 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.
ref: 2019, Shoshana Zuboff, “‘We Make Them Dance’: Surveillance Capitalism, the Rise of Instrumentarian Power, and the Threat to Human Rights”, in Rikke Frank Jørgensen, editor, Human Rights in the Age of Platforms, Cambridge, Massachusetts; London: MIT Press, →ISBN, page 25:
synonyms: accrescence
antonyms: nonaccretion
glosses: (Gradual) increase by an external addition of matter; (countable) an instance of this.
topics: geography
geology
natural-sciences
synonyms: accrescence
antonyms: nonaccretion
attrition
erosion
glosses: (Gradual) increase by an external addition of matter; (countable) an instance of this.
The process by which material is added to a geological feature; specifically, to a tectonic plate at a subduction zone.
examples: text: [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.
ref: 1713 October 19 (Gregorian calendar), Richard Steele, “October 8. [1713].”, in The Englishman: Being the Sequel of the Guardian, collected edition, number 2, London: […] Sam[uel] Buckley […], published 1714, →OCLC, page 12:
glosses: Followed by of: external addition of matter to a thing which causes it to grow, especially in amount or size.
examples: text: The accretion of particles forms a solid mass.
text: [T]he vvhole Country of Holland ſeems to be an Accretion partly by the Sea, partly by the River Rhine.
ref: a. 1677 (date written), Matthew Hale, “The Sixth Evidence of Fact Proving Novitatem Generis Humani, Namely, the History of the Patres Familiarum, and the Original Plantation of the Continents and Islands of the World”, in The Primitive Origination of Mankind, Considered and Examined According to the Light of Nature, London: […] William Godbid, for William Shrowsbery, […], published 1677, →OCLC, section II, page 191:
text: 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.
ref: 1891, Thomas Hardy, chapter XIII, in Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented […], volume I, London: James R[ipley] Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., […], →OCLC, phase the second (Maiden No More), page 166:
glosses: The process of separate particles aggregating or coalescing together; concretion; (countable) a thing formed in this manner.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 2018 April 26, Alexandra Witze, “Earth may have been Formed by a Bunch of Tiny Space Pebbles”, in Jeffrey Goldberg, editor, The Atlantic, Washington, D.C.: The Atlantic Monthly Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 28 Jan 2023:
topics: astrophysics
glosses: The process of separate particles aggregating or coalescing together; concretion; (countable) a thing formed in this manner.
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.
examples: text: accretion of ice
text: [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, […]
ref: a. 1677 (date written), Matthew Hale, “A Brief Consideration of the Hypotheses that Concern the Eternity of the World”, in The Primitive Origination of Mankind, Considered and Examined According to the Light of Nature, London: […] William Godbid, for William Shrowsbery, […], published 1677, →OCLC, section I, page 96:
text: 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.
ref: 1855, George Cornewall Lewis, “History of Rome, from the Expulsion of the Kings to the Burning of the City by the Gauls (509–390 BCE)”, in An Inquiry into the Credibility of the Early Roman History […], volume 2, London: John W[illiam] Parker and Son, […], →OCLC, part I (From the Establishment of Consuls to the First Secession (509–494 b.c.)), § 17, page 75:
glosses: Something gradually added to or growing on a thing externally.
examples: text: 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.
text: 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.
ref: 1985 February 2, Sandra Karp, “Making Female Experience Sacred”, in Gay Community News, volume 12, number 28, page 12:
glosses: Something gradually added to or growing on a thing externally.
A substance which has built up on the surface of an object, rather than become embedded in it.
topics: law
property
synonyms: accrual
accruer
glosses: 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.
qualifier: inheritance law
glosses: 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.
Derived terms: accretional
accretionally
accretionary
accretion disc
accretion disk
accretion-powered pulsar
accretion shock
coaccretion
co-accretion
hyperaccretion
nonaccretion
oligarchic accretion
reaccretion
Related terms: word: accrescence
word: accrescent
word: accretal
word: accrete
word: accretive
word: accrual
word: accrue
word: accruement
word: accruer
word: decretion
word: secretion