aggregate

¹ag·gre·gate

adj \ˈa-gri-gət\

Definition of AGGREGATE

: formed by the collection of units or particles into a body, mass, or amount : collective: as a (1) : clustered in a dense mass or head <an aggregate flower> (2) : formed from several separate ovaries of a single flower <aggregate fruit> b : composed of mineral crystals of one or more kinds or of mineral rock fragments c : taking all units as a whole <aggregate sales>

— ag·gre·gate·ly adverb

— ag·gre·gate·ness noun

Examples of AGGREGATE

1. The university receives more than half its aggregate income from government sources.
2. The team with the highest aggregate score wins.
3. There were to be thirty-seven playgrounds, twenty schools. There were to be a hundred and thirty-three miles of street, paved with an inch and a half of No. 2 macadam on an aggregate base. —Joan Didion, New Yorker, 26 July 1993
4. Their success at opening up new sources of supply, generating and servicing demand, and connecting new markets with the processing industries of the Amsterdam entrepôt seemed … to belie the axiom of an inelastic aggregate volume of world trade—a zero-sum competition. —Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches, 1988
5. The mulberry looks a bit like a raspberry. But the raspberry (along with the other brambles, members of the genus Rubus, such as the blackberry) is an aggregate fruit generated by a single, if complex, flower. —Raymond Sokolov, Natural History, October 1986
6. With Keynes, standard theory conceded that disequilibria might intrude upon the economy as a whole, but it held that these could be remedied by judicious stabilization of aggregate demand—that is, combined government and consumer purchasing power. —Robert Kuttner, Atlantic, February 1985

Origin of AGGREGATE

Middle English aggregat, from Latin aggregatus, past participle of aggregare to add to, from ad- + greg-, grex flock

First Known Use: 15th century