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Collection vs Accumulate - What's the difference?

collection | accumulate |

As a noun collection

is a set of items or amount of material procured or gathered together.

As a verb accumulate is

to heap up in a mass; to pile up; to collect or bring together; to amass.

As an adjective accumulate is

collected; accumulated.

collection

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • A set of items or amount of material procured or gathered together.
  • *
  • Secondly, I continue to base my concepts on intensive study of a limited suite of collections , rather than superficial study of every packet that comes to hand.
  • * (William Whewell)
  • Collections of moisture.
  • * Dunglison
  • A purulent collection .
  • Multiple related objects associated as a group.
  • * , chapter=5
  • , title= Mr. Pratt's Patients , passage=Of all the queer collections of humans outside of a crazy asylum, it seemed to me this sanitarium was the cup winner. […] When you're well enough off so's you don't have to fret about anything but your heft or your diseases you begin to get queer, I suppose.}}
  • The activity of collecting.
  • (topology, analysis) A set of sets.
  • A gathering of money for charitable or other purposes, as by passing a contribution box for donations.
  • (obsolete) The act of inferring or concluding from premises or observed facts; also, that which is inferred.
  • * (John Milton)
  • We may safely say thus, that wrong collections have been hitherto made out of those words by modern divines.
  • (UK) The jurisdiction of a collector of excise.
  • A set of college exams generally taken at the start of the term.
  • Derived terms

    * collection agency * collection plate * minicollection * take up a collection

    accumulate

    English

    Verb

    (accumulat)
  • To heap up in a mass; to pile up; to collect or bring together; to amass.
  • He wishes to accumulate a sum of money.
  • To grow or increase in quantity or number; to increase greatly.
  • * Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates , and men decay. -
  • Synonyms

    * collect * pile up * store * amass * gather * aggregate * heap together * hoard * proliferate

    Adjective

    (-)
  • (poetic, rare) Collected; accumulated.