excrescence
Contents
English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
Middle English, early 15th century, in sense “(action of) growing out (of something else)”. From Latin excrescentia (“abnormal growths”), from excrescentem, from excrēscere, from ex- (“out”) (English ex-) + crēscere (“to grow”) (English crescent). Sense of “abnormal growth” from 1570s, from earlier excrescency (1540s in this sense).[1]
Pronunciation[edit]
Noun[edit]
excrescence (plural excrescences)
- something, usually abnormal, which grows out of something else
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1847, Charlotte Brontë, chapter 7, in Jane Eyre[1]:
- I have again and again intimated that I desire the hair to be arranged closely, modestly, plainly. Miss Temple, that girl’s hair must be cut off entirely; I will send a barber to-morrow: and I see others who have far too much of the excrescence—that tall girl, tell her to turn round.
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1903, Jack London, chapter 7, in The Call of the Wild[2]:
- The squirrels were in hiding. One only he saw,—a sleek gray fellow, flattened against a gray dead limb so that he seemed a part of it, a woody excrescence upon the wood itself.
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1933, George Orwell, chapter 31, in Down and Out in Paris and London[3]:
- It is taken for granted that a beggar does not 'earn' his living, as a bricklayer or a literary critic 'earns' his. He is a mere social excrescence, tolerated because we live in a humane age, but essentially despicable.
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- a disfiguring or unwanted mark or adjunct
- (phonetics) epenthesis of a consonant, e.g., warmth as [ˈwɔrmpθ] (adding a [p] between [m] and [θ]), or -t (Etymology 2).
Hyponyms[edit]
- (phonetic): linking consonant
Related terms[edit]
Translations[edit]
something, usually abnormal, which grows out of something else
See also[edit]
- (phonetic): intervocalic
References[edit]
- ^ “excrescence” in Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary, 2001–2018.
