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Accretion   /əkrˈiʃən/   Listen
Accretion

noun
1.
An increase by natural growth or addition.  Synonym: accumulation.
2.
Something contributing to growth or increase.  "The central city surrounded by recent accretions"
3.
(astronomy) the formation of a celestial object by the effect of gravity pulling together surrounding objects and gases.
4.
(biology) growth by addition as by the adhesion of parts or particles.
5.
(geology) an increase in land resulting from alluvial deposits or waterborne sediment.
6.
(law) an increase in a beneficiary's share in an estate (as when a co-beneficiary dies or fails to meet some condition or rejects the inheritance).



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"Accretion" Quotes from Famous Books



... Intercollegiate Peace Association, like that of most social movements, was slow in the first few years of its existence, but with the gradual accretion of new states it has gained in momentum, and is to-day increasing with such rapidity that only the lack of financial support will prevent it from embracing in its contests within another two years practically every state in the Union. ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... a step forward, and turn from local to personal attachments of tradition. There is a whole class of traditions attached to personages about whose historical existence there can be but little doubt, and just because of the accretion of tradition round them their historical existence has oftentimes been denied. The most famous example in our history is of course King Arthur, and so great an authority as Sir John Rhys is obliged to resort to a special argument to account for the problems he is faced with. He ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... and sensual organs, in fact, our whole body and life, are but an accretion round and a fostering of the spermatozoa. They are the real "He." A man's eyes, ears, tongue, nose, legs and arms are but so many organs and tools that minister to the protection, education, increased intelligence ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.

... became national. By the latter part of the eleventh century, when the form of the "Song of Roland" which we possess was probably composed, the historical germ of the story had almost disappeared under the mass of legendary accretion. Charlemagne, who was a man of thirty-six at the time of the actual Roncesvaux incident, has become in the poem an old man with a flowing white beard, credited with endless conquests; the Basques have disappeared, and the Saracens have taken their place; the defeat ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various

... IX.—one of "the latest expansions,"— thoroughly understands the legal and constitutional situation, as between Agamemnon and Achilles. Or rather all the poets who collaborated in Book IX., which "had grown by a process of accretion," [Footnote: Leaf, Iliad, vol. i. p. 371.] ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang


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