Definition of "agglomerate" in English

adjective

1. collected into a ball, heap, or mass

noun

1. A collection or mass.

2. (geology, volcanology) A mass of angular volcanic fragments united by heat; distinguished from conglomerate.

3. (meteorology) An ice cover of floe formed by the freezing together of various forms of ice.

verb

1. (ambitransitive) To wind or collect into a ball; hence, to gather into a mass or anything like a mass.

   • 1820, William Hazlitt, “Explanations—Conversation on the Drama with Coleridge” in Dramatic Essays London: Scott, 1895, p. 197, His [Jean Racine’s] tragedies are not poetry, are not passion, are not imagination: they are a parcel of set speeches, of epigrammatic conceits, of declamatory phrases, without any of the glow, and glancing rapidity, and principle of fusion in the mind of the poet, to agglomerate them into grandeur, or blend them into harmony.

2. (geography) To extend an urban area by contiguous development, so as to merge the built-up area of one or more central cities or settlements and their suburbs (thus creating an agglomeration).