accrescencen.
/əˈkrɛsns/, U.S. /əˈkrɛsəns/ 1. The process or fact of growing by accretion or addition. Now rare.
ΘΚΠ
the world > relative properties > quantity > increase in quantity, amount, or degree > [noun] > continuous increase
accrescence1606
accretion1615
1606 B. Barnes Foure Bks. Offices iv. 189 Pithagoras..did verily beleeue..many strange things by mysticall and hidden arts, which consisted vpon th' accrescence and decrescence of numbers.
1816 S. T. Coleridge Statesman's Man. App. B p. xli The silent accrescence of belief from the unwatched depositions of a general, never-contradicted hearsay.
1877 H. Collins Life Dame G. More 3 The rational powers find their first exercise in the accrescence of new ideas.
1956 Adv. Genetics 8 69 Plant part..Calyx... Nonsegregating characters..Accrescence.
2000 I. Rilke tr. C. Nooteboom Roads to Santiago 196 You observe the accrescence of texts over other texts, the origins of the interminable manuscript that only Borges and Uco can read.
2. Something which grows on or is attached to another by accretion; (also) the mass resulting from accretion; an instance of accretion.
ΚΠ
1649 Bp. J. Taylor Great Exemplar xvii. §6 The primitive Christians..when they had washed off the accrescences of Gentile superstition, they chose such rites which their neighbours used.
1705 Philos. Trans. 1704–05 (Royal Soc.) 24 1858 The said Salt Particles divers Circles, which we judged to be Coagulated Salts, and which by such an accrescence grew still greater and greater.
a1834 S. T. Coleridge Lit. Remains (1836) II. 220 This accrescence of objectivity in a Ghost that yet retains all its ghostly attributes and fearful subjectivity, is truly wonderful.
1885 Brit. Med. Jrnl. 14 Mar. 544/1 Every new edition has received, by a process similar to that of the snowball rolling down the hill-side, such accrescences as to make it a work of truly portentous size.
1910 J. Lees tr. H. S. Chamberlain Found. 19th Cent. (1911) I. vi. 504 Celtic poetry of the thirteenth century was at a disadvantage..its genuine poetical kernel almost as much obscured by alien accrescences as the Norse myths in the German Nibelungenlied.
1991 N. Lewis Goddess in Stones 35 Now, with all the divisions and accrescences that the centuries have added, a staggering total of 520 sub-castes has been reached.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, December 2011; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
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n.1606- of the part of
- of the period
- of the same
- of the same diet
- of the same flight
- of the same leaven
- of the same meal
- of the same order
- of the same venter
- of the same, that, every, etc feather
- of the season
- of the second etc magnitude
- of the second magnitude
- of the second third magnitude
- of the sudden
- of the third point
- of the week
- of the whole blood
- of the world
- of the year
- of the —— persuasion
- of their purposing
- of theirs
- of thine
- of this date