agglomerate

English

Alternative forms

• aglomerate

Etymology

From Latin agglomerare (“to wind into a ball”), from ad (“to”) + glomerare (“to wind into a ball”), from glomus (“a ball”), akin to globus (“a ball”).

Pronunciation

• Adjective, noun:
  • AHD: əglŏ'mərət
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /əˈɡlɒm(ə)ɹət/
  • (General American) IPA^(key): /əˈɡlɑm(ə)ɹət/

  • Audio (US)

    (file)

• Verb:
  • AHD: əglŏ'mərāt
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /əˈɡlɒm(ə)ˌɹeɪt/
  • (General American) IPA^(key): /əˈɡlɑ.mɚˌeɪt/

  • Audio (US)

    (file)

Adjective

agglomerate (comparative more agglomerate, superlative most agglomerate)

1. collected into a ball, heap, or mass

Synonyms

• agglomerated

Translations

Noun

agglomerate (plural agglomerates)

1. A collection or mass.
2. (geology, volcanology) A mass of angular volcanic fragments united by heat; distinguished from conglomerate.
3. (meteorology) An ice cover of floe formed by the freezing together of various forms of ice.

Synonyms

• (collection or mass): agglomeration, collection, mass

Translations

Verb

agglomerate (third-person singular simple present agglomerates, present participle agglomerating, simple past and past participle agglomerated)

1. (transitive, intransitive) To wind or collect into a ball; hence, to gather into a mass or anything like a mass.
   • 1789, William Gilpin, Observations on the River Wye: and Several Parts of South Wales‎, 2nd edition, London: R. Blamire, Section 10, p. 122:

     The bustle of a croud is not ill-adapted to the pencil: but the management of it requires great artifice. The whole must be massed together, and considered as one body. ¶ I mean not to have the whole body so agglomerated, as to consist of no detached groups: but to have these groups […] appear to belong to one whole, by the artifice of composition, and the effect of light.

   • 1820, William Hazlitt, “Explanations—Conversation on the Drama with Coleridge” in Dramatic Essays London: Scott, 1895, p. 197,

     His tragedies are not poetry, are not passion, are not imagination: they are a parcel of set speeches, of epigrammatic conceits, of declamatory phrases, without any of the glow, and glancing rapidity, and principle of fusion in the mind of the poet, to agglomerate them into grandeur, or blend them into harmony.

   • 1937, Claude McKay, chapter 3, in A Long Way from Home‎, New York: Arno Press, published 1969, page 35:

     There were few white friends in the social life of the peasants. The white colony agglomerated in the towns and the peasants were 80 per cent of a population of a million.

   • 2009, Peter Campion, “Imperium”, in The Lions, University of Chicago Press, page 14:

     It feels like doing eighty on the freeway / as little towns agglomerate and blur:

2. (geography) To extend an urban area by contiguous development, so as to merge the built-up area of one or more central cities or settlements and their suburbs (thus creating an agglomeration).

Synonyms

• (collect into a ball): ball, ball up, bundle up, clew, conglobate, conglobe, globe, orb, wind
• (gather into a mass): amass, gather, gather up, merge, pile up; see also Thesaurus:pile up or Thesaurus:coalesce

Related terms

• agglomeration
• agglomerative

Translations

Derived terms

Further reading

• “agglomerate”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
• “agglomerate”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
• “agglomerate”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

Italian

Etymology 1

Verb

agglomerate

1. inflection of agglomerare:
   1. second-person plural present indicative
   2. second-person plural imperative

Etymology 2

Participle

agglomerate f pl

1. feminine plural of agglomerato

Latin

Verb

agglomerāte

1. second-person plural present active imperative of agglomerō