excrescence
/ɛkˈskɹɛsəns/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: 1.47 in modern English
24
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
3
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Something, usually abnormal, which grows out of something else.
noun
A disfiguring or unwanted mark or adjunct.
noun
The epenthesis of a consonant, e.g., warmth as [ˈwɔrmpθ] (adding a [p] between [m] and [θ]), or -t (Etymology 2).
Example Sentences
- "I have again and again intimated that I desire the hair to be arranged closely, modestly, plainly. Miss Temple, that girl’s hair must be cut off entirely; I will send a barber to-morrow: and I see others who have far too much of the excrescence—that tall girl, tell her to turn round."
- "The squirrels were in hiding. One only he saw,—a sleek gray fellow, flattened against a gray dead limb so that he seemed a part of it, a woody excrescence upon the wood itself."
- "Perhaps he meant that towns are after all excrescences, grey fluxions, where men, hurrying to find one another, have lost themselves."
- "It is taken for granted that a beggar does not 'earn' his living, as a bricklayer or a literary critic 'earns' his. He is a mere social excrescence, tolerated because we live in a humane age, but essentially despicable."
- "Being bussum buddies, the two friends often communicated with mere exchange of psychic forces, verbal communication having been rendered unnecessary excrescence."
Etymology
From Middle English, early 15th century, in sense “(action of) growing out (of something else)”. Borrowed from Latin excrescentia (“abnormal growths”), from excrescentem, from excrēscere, from ex- (“out”) (English ex-) + crēscere (“to grow”) (English crescent). Sense of “abnormal growth” from 1570s, from earlier excrescency (1540s in this sense).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: -, excrescentia