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Fire Escape Partners
3465 25th Street, Suite 17
San Francisco, CA 94110 | (noun)
[ah-KREE-shahn] 
1. an increase by natural growth or by gradual addition from an external source: "Adam insisted that woks should never be fully washed, lest flavor from the accretion of previous meals be lost forever."
2. an added piece or section
3. (as in biology) the growing together of parts that are normally separate into a single unit
4. (as in geology) the slow addition to land by deposit of water-borne sediment
5. (as in law) an increase in a beneficiary's share in an estate or property either through natural additions or some legal complication, such as when a co-beneficiary dies or fails to meet some condition or rejects the inheritance
adjective forms: accretive, accretionary
Origin:
Approximately 1615; borrowed from Latin, 'accretionem': a growing larger (nominative of accretio), borrowed from stem of 'accrescere': grow larger; related English, 'accrue.' In Action:
"View'd freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all. From this point of view, it stands for Language in the largest sense, and is really the greatest of studies. It involves so much; is indeed a sort of universal absorber, combiner, and conqueror. The scope of its etymologies is the scope not only of man and civilization, but the history of Nature in all departments, and of the organic Universe, brought up to date; for all are comprehended in words, and their backgrounds."
Walt Whitman (1819-1892). American Poet, born in New York. 'Prose Works' November Boughs: Slang in America (1892). | |
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