agglomerate

Adjective

agglomerate (comparative more agglomerate, superlative most agglomerate)

1. collected into a ball, heap, or mass

   Synonyms:

   agglomerated

Noun

agglomerate (plural agglomerates)

1. A collection or mass.

   Synonyms:

   agglomeration, collection, mass

2. A mass of angular volcanic fragments united by heat; distinguished from conglomerate.
3. An ice cover of floe formed by the freezing together of various forms of ice.

Verb

UK/əˈɡlɒm(ə)ˌɹeɪt/US/əˈɡlɑ.mɚˌeɪt/

agglomerate (third-person singular simple present agglomerates, present participle agglomerating, simple past and past participle agglomerated)

1. (ambitransitive) To wind or collect into a ball; hence, to gather into a mass or anything like a mass.
   • The bustle of a croud is not ill-adapted to the pencil: but the management of it requires great artifice. The whole must be massed together, and considered as one body. ¶ I mean not to have the whole body so agglomerated, as to consist of no detached groups: but to have these groups […] appear to...1789, William Gilpin, Observations on the River Wye: and Several Parts of South Wales, 2nd edition, London: R. Blamire, Section 10, p. 122
   • 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...1820, William Hazlitt, “Explanations—Conversation on the Drama with Coleridge” in Dramatic Essays London: Scott, 1895, p. 197

   Synonyms:

   ball, ball up, bundle up, clew, conglobate, conglobe, globe, orb, wind, amass

2. 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).