ACCRETE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does accrete mean? 

• ACCRETE (verb)
  The verb ACCRETE has 2 senses:

1. grow together (of plants and organs)

2. grow or become attached by accretion

  Familiarity information: ACCRETE used as a verb is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ACCRETE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they accrete    ... he / she / it accretes   
Past simple: accreted   
Past participle: accreted   
-ing form: accreting   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Grow together (of plants and organs)

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Context example:

After many years the rose bushes grew together

Hypernyms (to "accrete" is one way to...):

blend; coalesce; combine; commingle; conflate; flux; fuse; immix; meld; merge; mix (mix together different elements)

Domain category:

flora; plant; plant life ((botany) a living organism lacking the power of locomotion)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s

Derivation:

accretive (growing by accretion)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Grow or become attached by accretion

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Context example:

The story accreted emotion

Hypernyms (to "accrete" is one way to...):

accumulate; amass; conglomerate; cumulate; gather; pile up (collect or gather)

Sentence frame:

Something ----s something

Derivation:

accretion (an increase by natural growth or addition)

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

accretive (growing by accretion)

 Context examples 

The debris from the impact might have become a ring before accreting and becoming a moon.

(Mars May Have Had Rings, and May Once Again, VOA News)

The enormous gravitational force of such a massive body would accrete a gas envelope during formation, ballooning the planet to a gas giant the size of Neptune or even Jupiter.

(Astronomers confounded by massive rocky world, NASA)

Or did it just slowly accrete gas for new stars?

(Hubble Surveys Gigantic Galaxy, NASA)

He hypothesizes that essentially it started out as a dry rock and rapidly accreted hydrogen from a primordial disk of gas when its star was very young.

(Atmosphere of Midsize Planet Revealed by Hubble, Spitzer, NASA)

Supermassive black holes are present in almost all galaxies, so why are only a few accreting matter and shining brightly?

(Supermassive Black Holes Feed on Cosmic Jellyfish, ESO)

It's now part of a small group of mysterious bright pulsars that are challenging astronomers to rethink how pulsars accumulate, or accrete, material.

(NuSTAR Helps Find Universe's Brightest Pulsars, NASA)

If such a planet were orbiting close to a hot white dwarf, the extreme ultraviolet radiation from the star would strip away its outer layers and some of this stripped gas would swirl into a disc, itself accreting onto the white dwarf.

(First Giant Planet around White Dwarf Found, ESO)

The team, including Carnegie's Eduardo Banados and led by Roberto Decarli of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, made this discovery by accident when investigating quasars, which are supermassive black holes that sit at the center of enormous galaxies, accreting matter.

(Stunning Star Birth in Earliest Galaxies, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

The new research, from data gathered by six of Cassini's instruments before its mission ended in 2017, is a clear confirmation that dust and ice from the rings accretes onto the moons embedded within and near the rings.

(NASA's Cassini Finds Saturn's Rings Coat Tiny Moons, NASA)

These reactions may have occurred on the early-formed planetesimals which were accreted to Earth or possibly during the giant impact which formed the Moon and which is believed to have caused large-scale melting of our planet.

(Fiery Collisions That Gave Birth to Earth Could Have Evaporated 40% of Our World, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)