ACCRETION • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Accretion

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/əkrˈiʃən/ Listen

noun

accretion n.

1.

The act of increasing by natural growth; esp. the increase of organic bodies by the internal accession of parts; organic growth.

2.

The act of increasing, or the matter added, by an accession of parts externally; an extraneous addition; as, an accretion of earth. "A mineral... augments not by growth, but by accretion." "To strip off all the subordinate parts of his narrative as a later accretion."

3.

Concretion; coherence of separate particles; as, the accretion of particles so as to form a solid mass.

4.

A growing together of parts naturally separate, as of the fingers or toes.

5.

(Law)

(a)

The adhering of property to something else, by which the owner of one thing becomes possessed of a right to another; generally, gain of land by the washing up of sand or soil from the sea or a river, or by a gradual recession of the water from the usual watermark.

(b)

Gain to an heir or legatee, by failure of a coheir to the same succession, or a co-legatee of the same thing, to take his share.

See images of 'Accretion'

Etymology of 'Accretion'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar

"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

Copyright © 2025 Dictionary One.com