accumulate
Formsaccumulates, accumulating, accumulated
Formsaccumulates, accumulating, accumulated
- 1To gather or pile up a quantity of something over time, often gradually and without deliberate effort.
Investors accumulate wealth slowly through regular, modest contributions.
The abandoned house had accumulated layers of dust over decades.
Similarpile, amass, collect, hoard, heap
Oppositedisperse, dissipate, scatter
Note
Latin heaping lies at the root: accumulō, "to pile up", built on cumulus, "a heap", the picture the English verb still carries. Here it takes an object: you accumulate money, dust, or figurative stores like experience. Often nothing more deliberate than time does the gathering, which sets it apart from hoard and store, words that suggest a keeper with a purpose. The intransitive use drops the object altogether.
- 2To grow or increase in quantity or number, little by little over time.
Interest will accumulate on the unpaid balance each month.
Evidence accumulated until the theory could no longer be ignored.
Similargather, collect, aggregate
Oppositediminish, dwindle, decrease
Note
The verb with no object: the things themselves pile up, whether debts, interest or evidence. Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village (1770) gives it a famous couplet, "Where wealth accumulates, and men decay," setting the slow swelling of riches against human decline. In this construction the subject is the growing thing itself, so debts accumulate, and nobody needs to be named as the one collecting them.
- 3To take a higher academic degree at the same time as a lower one, or after a shorter interval than is usual.
The candidate accumulated his bachelor's and doctorate together, as the old statutes allowed.
Few students today can accumulate two degrees at one ceremony.
Note
An academic term for compressing the usual sequence of degrees: a candidate who accumulated took a lower and a higher degree together, or reached the higher one sooner than the customary wait allowed. The usage is dated, and a modern reader who meets it in older writing about universities should not mistake it for ordinary collecting. The object is degrees, and the point is the shortened interval.
Less common meaning
- 4Heaped or gathered together into a single mass; collected.
Note
An adjective that stays close to its Latin source, the participle accumulātus, "heaped up", with -ate doing the work that -ed does in the everyday form. It belongs to poetry and is rare even there. In ordinary prose, accumulated says the same thing. It is also not comparable, since nothing can be more accumulate than something else.
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Origin
First attested around 1487, from Middle English accumylaten, borrowed from Latin accumulātus, the past participle of accumulō ("to amass, pile up"). This was formed from ad ("to, towards") plus cumulō ("to heap"), which comes from cumulus ("a heap"). It is cognate with French accumuler.