Aggregate

How to spell aggregate

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce aggregate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does aggregate mean?

1. nounA whole formed by combining several separate elements; a total or collected mass.
2. verbTo gather or combine separate items into a single total or group.
3. adjectiveFormed by adding together; constituting a combined whole.

Aggregate in a sentence

• noun

  The team won the tie 4-2 on aggregate over the two legs.

• verb

  The software will aggregate the sales data from all the regional offices.

• adjective

  The aggregate demand for housing rose sharply across the city.

• noun

  The report presents the figures in aggregate rather than by individual branch.

• verb

  News apps aggregate headlines from dozens of different publishers.

• adjective

  Economists track aggregate spending to gauge the health of the economy.

Where does aggregate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb aggregare, meaning 'to add to the flock' or 'to gather into a herd'. It was built from the prefix ad- (to, toward), which assimilated to ag- before the g, plus the noun grex, gregis, meaning 'a flock or herd' of animals. Latin speakers used the image of gathering animals together as a metaphor for collecting things into a single mass or total, and that figurative sense is the one English adopted. The word arrived in English in the fifteenth century, first as an adjective and noun, with the verb following close behind. The same grex root still grazes inside the familiar relatives 'gregarious' (literally fond of the flock), 'congregate', and 'segregate', and remembering that flock helps fix the doubled g and the single g spelling: it is ag-greg, not agre-gate.

How the word is built

• ag- (to, assimilated form of ad-)
• greg (flock, herd, from Latin grex)
• -ate (verb/noun-forming suffix)