Aggregation

How to spell aggregation

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce aggregation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does aggregation mean?

1. nounThe gathering of separate items, amounts, or data into a single combined whole.

Aggregation in a sentence

• The report relied on the aggregation of sales figures from every regional office.

• News apps depend on the aggregation of stories from hundreds of separate sources.

Where does aggregation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin verb aggregare, meaning 'to add to a flock' or 'to gather into a herd', which was formed from ad- 'to' and grex (stem greg-) 'flock, herd'. The literal image is therefore one of animals being driven together into a single group, and that picture of separate items being brought into one mass survives in the modern meaning. The noun aggregatio described the act of such gathering, and it passed into English in the late Middle Ages, largely through scholarly and legal Latin. The same grex root sits inside several familiar relatives: a 'gregarious' person likes to be in the flock, to 'congregate' is to flock together, and to 'segregate' is to set apart from the flock. Remembering that buried greg, with its single g in the root joined to the doubled g of the ad- prefix, helps explain why the word carries the slightly awkward 'ggreg' cluster in the middle.

How the word is built

• ag- (to, assimilated form of ad-)
• greg (flock, herd, from Latin grex)
• -ation (noun of action)