How to Use accrete in a Sentence
accrete
verb-
As cells age and divide, small errors accrete in their DNA.
—Dhruv Khullar, The New Yorker, 11 Aug. 2021
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The moon itself is thought to be a chunk of the Earth that was smashed off in an enormous collision and then accreted from the debris.
—Jay Bennett, Popular Mechanics, 5 Oct. 2017
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Paint is woven and layered and allowed to accrete in ways that evoke human flesh.
—Los Angeles Times, 21 Oct. 2020
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The metallic nodules take millions of years to form as metals slowly accrete around a small core.
—Nathaniel Scharping, Discover Magazine, 20 Dec. 2016
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Filling the bench is a project whose impact will accrete slowly, with one decision at a time by judges who hold their jobs for decades.
—Tessa Berenson, Time, 8 Feb. 2018
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On the other hand, the rental bikes often seem to be scattered about the city in clumps: a phalanx of bikes accreting outside a Metro station, on a street corner, in a park.
—John Kelly, Washington Post, 19 Feb. 2018
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Any dust and gas not accreted onto rocks by then is lost, burned in the star or dispersed in space, and no more material for planet building is available.
—Linda T. Elkins-Tanton, Scientific American, 1 Dec. 2016
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Meanwhile, in Leah’s chapters, the details of that disastrous deep-sea mission begin to accrete, sharp and beautiful as coral polyps.
—Ron Charles, Washington Post, 12 July 2022
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The action accelerates as slowly as a stair car, accreting new subplots like hop-ons.
—New York Times, 28 May 2018
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And when researchers tried to add extra oxytocin by itself, the hormone’s benefits were overwhelmed by waste accreted in old blood.
—The Economist, 12 Sep. 2019
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Even Riis accreted itself into being: Tidal rolls shaped by the moon dragged rocks and bits of silt to land until the beach emerged, drawn into being by the ancient will of nature itself.
—Jenna Wortham, New York Times, 22 Mar. 2023
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This produces what are called luminous accreting black holes.
—Chris Lee, Ars Technica, 14 Nov. 2018
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Some bodies get flung into the Sun; others out of the Solar System; others accrete onto larger masses.
—Ethan Siegel, Forbes, 16 Apr. 2021
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Kidney stones form when minerals, usually calcium, accrete in the kidneys and begin to form jagged lumps.
—Nathaniel Scharping, Discover Magazine, 26 Sep. 2016
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But to grow large, hail stones must be levitated for long periods of time high in the storm cloud, to accrete layer upon layer and this requires a vigorous cloud updraft.
—Jason Samenow, Washington Post, 16 May 2022
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Like witches in the ages between them, both women are symptomatic figures, endlessly accreting the stories a culture wants to tell about itself.
—Lidija Haas, Harper's Magazine, 27 Apr. 2020
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Here, the more legible parts confer ceremonial dignity on the undignified rite of the blind-ish date, but the sequences don’t accrete into anything much.
—Alexis Soloski, New York Times, 26 May 2017
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The new photo further exposes a larger, darker central region surrounded by bright accreting gas in a ring-like shape.
—Ariana Garcia, Chron, 14 Apr. 2023
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The gravity was great enough that whenever their orbits brought them near another object, that object was either drawn in and accreted through the pull of gravity or flung away as its orbit was changed.
—Linda T. Elkins-Tanton, Scientific American, 1 Dec. 2016
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For the actual construction, cement-like material will be piped out like frosting from a pastry bag, forming layers that accrete upward to become walls.
—Emily Matchar, Smithsonian Magazine, 16 Mar. 2021
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Those filaments could have shaped the direction in which matter accreted onto these galaxies’ haloes, some scientists say.
—Kiona N. Smith, Ars Technica, 1 Feb. 2018
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There are more solids available, and that could facilitate forming giant planets by providing material for their cores, which would then accrete gas and become gas giants.
—John Wenz, Ars Technica, 22 Dec. 2019
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In some cases, according to NASA, a white dwarf can accrete enough material from its companion star to completely explode and go supernova.
—Jennifer Leman, Popular Mechanics, 13 June 2020
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Their models further suggest that PDS 70b itself has a circumplanetary disc of material that is accreting to its surface.
—Daniel Clery, Science | AAAS, 2 July 2018
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The grains accrete material thanks to a process called chemical precipitation.
—Joshua Hawkins, BGR, 12 May 2022
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In the lugubrious unfolding of geologic time, specks of waterborne nickel, copper, cobalt, and manganese slowly accreted onto them.
—WIRED, 28 Feb. 2023
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The various ridges of pink and orange material represent clouds of dust being broken down by young stars beginning to accrete and exert their gravitational muscle.
—Jeffrey Kluger, Time, 12 Jan. 2023
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This speed limit can theoretically be exceeded if the matter is collapsing fast enough; Basu and Das’ model suggests the black holes were accreting matter at three times the Eddington rate for as long as the chain reaction was happening.
—Meredith Fore, WIRED, 18 July 2019
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The Roys live in the fiction of infinite economic growth: wealth that accretes indefinitely, a financial system that operates outside of the world’s blunt physical limitations.
—Megan Garber, The Atlantic, 13 Oct. 2019
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These various solids, plus frozen water (oxygen and hydrogen), frozen ammonia (nitrogen and hydrogen) and frozen methane (carbon and hydrogen), are obvious ingredients for rocky and icy cores around which gas giants might accrete.
—The Economist, 13 July 2017
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'accrete.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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