Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Growing out abnormally, excessively, or superfluously.
- adj. Linguistics Of or relating to epenthesis; epenthetic.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Growing out of something else; specifically, abnormally put forth or added; hence, superfluous and incongruous: as, a wart is an excrescent growth on the hand; excrescent knots on a tree; excrescent ornaments on a dress or on a building.
Wiktionary
- n. Something growing, usually abnormally, out of something else.
- n. phonetics A sound in a word without etymological reason.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Growing out in an abnormal or morbid manner or as a superfluity.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. forming an outgrowth (usually an excessive outgrowth)
Etymologies
- From Latin excrēscēns, present participle of excrēscō. (Wiktionary)
Examples
“Scot actively engaged in parochial work, had his attention fixed upon the reckless improvidence of the 'excrescent' population, and welcomed”
“These were the facts which really suggested his theory of the 'excrescent' population, produced by the over-speculation of capitalists.”
“She has been flanked on policing issues by Greenwood-Aurora Involved Neighbors (GAIN), who stepped up the heat a degree or two after seeing a big spillover of crime from the excrescent Aurora Avenue North vice strip into their residential neighborhoods to the west, and after documenting types of crime, locations and slow or non-existent police response.”
“He was aided and abetted in this essential side of the supreme crime by the excrescent ‘ Lord Haw Haw’ Andrew Sullivan.”
“Note decisions 5 and 6 to the same Law, the former showing a similar application of the "rule" and the latter showing that who clauses escape the excrescent commas:Decision 5”
“It's the modern form (with an excrescent, or epenthetic, -s- from somewhere or other, perhaps harvest) of the Old English ofet 'fruit' (spelled obet in early glosses), which is related to German Obst.”
“So you're probably looking at the name actually being Pikni, with the excrescent vowel inserted between the two parts to help it conform to custom.”
“But I have found, during my travels in the Mediterranean, many persons of education, who pretended they did not believe this or that superstition of their church, whilst they were at heart great cowards, having no courage to reject a popular falsehood, and quite as superstitious as those who never doubt the excrescent dogmas or traditionary fables of their religion.”
“You are regarded an excrescent growth on the body of civil society.”
“Glandular enlargements not of scirrhous character, and excrescent growths not poisonous, may often be reduced, and perhaps sometimes cured, under the positive pole.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘excrescent’.
-
Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
-
Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
-
Monovocalics
Words that have only one of the vowels. On this list I include only words with at least three vowels. When I first started the list, if a word had several forms, I generally listed only the one wit...
syzygy, mirific, cumulus, homolog, monocot, bedewed, jezebel, referee, bikini, minikin, locomotor, terebenthene and 2359 more...
-
They Grow on You
accrescent, acescent, adipescent, alkalescent, contabescent, convalescent, decrescent, deliquescent, equicrescent, excrescent, fervescent, flavescent and 27 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for excrescent.
Comments
No comments yet...
Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.