Accumulation

How to spell accumulation

12 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce accumulation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does accumulation mean?

1. nounThe gradual gathering or building up of a growing quantity of something over time.

Accumulation in a sentence

• The gradual accumulation of savings let them buy a house without a loan.

• Years of dust accumulation had clogged the old ventilation system.

Where does accumulation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word traces back to the Latin verb accumulare, meaning 'to heap up' or 'to pile together'. That verb was built from the prefix ad- ('towards'), which assimilated to ac- before the hard c, joined to cumulare, 'to heap', which in turn came from the noun cumulus, meaning a 'heap' or 'mass'. English took the word in through French and Latin during the 1400s, keeping the sense of steadily gathering more and more of something. The same cumulus root still names the piled, heaped clouds we see on a summer day, which is a handy reminder that accumulation is about things stacking up. The big spelling trap lives right at the front: the prefix doubles the c (because ad- assimilated to ac-) while the m stays single, so it is double-c, single-m, never the reverse.

How the word is built

• ac- (from ad-, towards)
• cumul (from cumulus, a heap)
• -ation (noun-forming suffix)