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/əkrˈiʃən/ Listen

Accretion

noun

An increase by natural growth or addition. Synonym: accumulation.

Something contributing to growth or increase. "The central city surrounded by recent accretions"

(astronomy) the formation of a celestial object by the effect of gravity pulling together surrounding objects and gases.

(biology) growth by addition as by the adhesion of parts or particles.

(geology) an increase in land resulting from alluvial deposits or waterborne sediment.

(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

... remaining expressions of the hardy little men, and it fills one, as does everything Norman, from the Tyne to the Euphrates, with something of awe. This building, the White Tower, is the Tower itself; the rest is but an accretion, partly designed for defence, but latterly more for habitation. Its name of the "White" Tower is probably original, though we do not actually find the term "La Blaunche Tour" till near the middle of the fourteenth century. The presumption that it is the ...

— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc

... section 107 as it now stands is the result of a process of accretion, resulting from the long controversy over the related problems of fair use and the reproduction (mostly by photocopying) of copyrighted material for educational and scholarly purposes. For example, the reference to fair use—"by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means"—is ...

— Reproduction of Copyrighted Works By Educators and Librarians • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.

... believed that such an extraordinary system of sound-signs could have been the invention of any one man or even of any one age. Like all our other acquisitions, it must have been the slow growth and accretion of ages; it must have risen step by step from picture-writing through an intermediate condition like that of the Chinese, where each word or thing was represented by a separate sign. The fact that so old and enlightened a people as the Chinese have never reached a phonetic ...

— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... and vital a part of life? We have lost it now, whatever it was. Churches like these were then an obvious necessity; kings and princes vied with each other in raising them, and no one questioned their utility. They are now a mere luxury for ecclesiastically minded persons, built by slow accretion, and not by some huge single gift, to please the pride of a county or a city; and this in days when England is a thousandfold richer than she was. They are no longer a part of the essence of life; life ...

— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... sister are familiar in the Egyptian royal house, and that of the Incas. But the poet has a perfect right to disregard a scandalous myth which, obviously crystallised later about the figure of the mythical Celtic Arthur, was an incongruous accretion to his legend. Gareth, therefore, is merely Arthur's nephew, not son, in the poem, as are Gawain and the traitor Modred. The story seems to be rather mediaeval French than Celtic—a mingling of the spirit of fabliau and popular fairy tale. The poet has added to its lightness, ...

— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang

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