SINCE 1828
aggregate
adjective
ag·gre·gate
| \ ˈa-gri-gət
\
\
Definition of aggregate
(Entry 1 of 3)
: formed by the collection of units or particles into a body, mass, or amount : collective: such 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
aggregate
verb
ag·gre·gate
| \ ˈa-gri-ˌgāt
\
\
aggregated;
aggregating
Definition of aggregate (Entry 2 of 3)
1
: to collect or gather into a mass or whole
The census data were aggregated by gender.
2
: to amount to (a whole sum or total) : total
audiences aggregating several million people
aggregate
noun
ag·gre·gate
| \ ˈa-gri-gət
\
\
Definition of aggregate (Entry 3 of 3)
1
: a mass or body of units or parts somewhat loosely associated with one another
Froth is an aggregate of tiny bubbles.
2
: the whole sum or amount : sum total
spent an aggregate of 10 million dollars in advertising during the past three years
3a
: a rock composed of mineral crystals of one or more kinds or of mineral rock fragments : an aggregate rock
b
: any of several hard inert materials (such as sand, gravel, or slag) used for mixing with a cementing material to form concrete, mortar, or plaster
c
: a clustered mass of individual soil particles varied in shape, ranging in size from a microscopic granule to a small crumb, and considered the basic structural unit of soil
4
: set sense 21
in the aggregate
: considered as a whole : collectively
Dividends for the year amounted in the aggregate to 25 million dollars.
Keep scrolling for more
Synonyms for aggregate
Synonyms: Verb
add up (to), amount (to), come (to), count (up to), number, sum (to or into), total
Synonyms: Noun
full, sum, sum total, summation, total, totality, whole
Visit the Thesaurus for More
Examples of aggregate in a Sentence
Adjective
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 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 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 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 The university receives more than half its aggregate income from government sources. The team with the highest aggregate score wins.Verb
The problem, in this case, is that the synergy creates incentives for segregation. Ethnic advertisers scour the TV schedule for shows and channels that "aggregate" viewers of the type the client wants to reach … — Tamar Jacoby, New Republic, 24 Jan. 2000 "We are good at aggregating eyeballs and delivering services," says Barry Schuler, the president of AOL Interactive Services, "and the Time Warner deal is a natural extension of that." — Barry Schuler, Fortune, 7 Feb. 2000 Pollsters, for the most part, know perfectly well what they are doing. One thing they are doing is aggregating and averaging ephemeral spasms of "mood" that may have commercial or political value. — Christopher Hitchens, Harper's, April 1992 … covered only if each of the corporations involved has capital, surplus and undivided profits aggregating more than $10 million … — Joe Sims et al., National Law Journal, 28 Jan. 1991 The Web site aggregates content from many other sites. over time, her petty thefts aggregated a significant shortfall in the company's booksNoun
In particular, a core of popular politically minded blogs known in the aggregate as the Blogosphere has been a beehive of furious activity. Or should I say a wasp's nest? — Steven Levy, Newsweek, 4 Oct. 2004 It's true that our lives are the aggregate of a lot of little things, that's precisely why, at least once a year, we need to ride the wave of something bigger and bolder than our own little humdrum existence. — Will Manley, Booklist, 1 Sept. 2002 Smallness of enterprises, as in the Japanese bicycle-manufacturing development, is an asset because smallness cuts down administrative and other overhead costs both in individual enterprises and in the aggregate, in comparison with the overhead costs of large operations. — Jane Jacobs, Cities and the Wealth of Nations, (1984) 1985 numerous episodes of pilferage, taken in the aggregate, can really add up to a significant sum
Recent Examples on the Web: Adjective
Part of what’s happening is that as more and more of the weight of the economy goes toward these superstar firms, this tends to drag down the share of labor in the aggregate income. — Paul Kiernan, WSJ, "Despite Tight Job Market, Labor Force’s Income Is Squeezed," 23 Feb. 2019 Madrid won the 2000 semifinal series 3-2 on aggregate and advanced with the same score in the 2002 quarterfinals. — Tales Azzoni, chicagotribune.com, "Bayern Munich-Real Madrid, a semifinal rich in Champions League history," 25 Apr. 2018 In the quarterfinals, Roma overturned a 4-1 aggregate deficit by beating Barcelona 3-0 in the second leg at home to go through via away-goal tiebreaker. — Avi Creditor, SI.com, "LIVE: Liverpool Looks to Avoid UCL 2nd-Leg Collapse in Semifinal at Roma," 2 May 2018 Roma ralliered back from a 4-1 aggregate deficit against Barcelona in the quarterfinals, winning 3-0 at home in the second leg to go through on away goals. — Jesse Yomtov, USA TODAY, "Champions League semifinals draw: Bayern Munich–Real Madrid, Liverpool-Roma," 13 Apr. 2018 The OpenSecrets website maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics tells a similar story with its list of educational outfits where employees in aggregate generate the largest political donations. — James Freeman, WSJ, "America's Most Partisan Industry," 6 Nov. 2018 Working Washington estimated that 250,000 to 500,000 people are underpaid by as much as $4 billion a year in aggregate because of the failure to update the state’s overtime rules. — Benjamin Romano, The Seattle Times, "Washington considers raising 42-year-old standard on who gets overtime pay," 26 Oct. 2018 The power of that information, even in aggregate and anonymized, is enough to have drawn big brands to the platform at launch. — Sean O'kane, The Verge, "Miles is an app that tracks your every move in exchange for deals and discounts," 24 July 2018 The others are sending an all clear, with jobless claims near multidecade lows, industrial production at a record high and aggregate hours—the combined amount of time Americans are spending on the job—growing steadily. — Justin Lahart, WSJ, "Recession Is Looming, or Not. Here’s How to Know," 25 Dec. 2018Recent Examples on the Web: Verb
Regulators have been considering the release of these data, including ways to anonymize and aggregate them appropriately, for well over a year. — Sheila C. Bair And Gaurav Vasisht, WSJ, "The Volcker Rule Needs Transparency More Than ‘Simplification’," 9 Sep. 2018 Carmakers' ultimate objective, Lanctot said, is to build a database of consumer preferences that could be aggregated and sold to outside vendors for marketing purposes, much like Google and Facebook do today. — chicagotribune.com, "Pop-up ads in your car? It could be the next big thing," 6 Mar. 2018 How to aggregate and use data is one of the great challenges of the digital age. — John Warner, chicagotribune.com, "Thumbs down to murky star ratings: Tell us whether a book is worth reading," 10 July 2018 Many travel startups have tried to aggregate the market for experiences, but struggled to expand locally focused businesses to a national or global level. — Erin Griffith, WIRED, "The Airbnb Challenger You've Never Heard of (by Name)," 2 July 2018 For his part, Trump tweeted out a story with Lynch's quotes, aggregated by conservative website Breibart.com, on Monday. — Kimberly Nordyke, The Hollywood Reporter, "David Lynch Backtracks After Saying Trump "Could Go Down as One of the Greatest Presidents"," 26 June 2018 Only about 1 percent of plastic waste collects at the surface; most of it aggregates at the floor of the ocean, where deep-sea sediments behave as a sink for the microplastics. — Radhika Viswanathan, Vox, "Why Starbucks, Disney, and the EU are all shunning plastic straws," 24 Oct. 2018 There are many options for ways to know who's on the ballot, and a lot of sites aggregating quotes that summarize a candidate's stance. — Amanda Mitchell, Marie Claire, "Who to Vote for in the 2018 Midterms: A Complete Guide to Figuring It Out," 13 Sep. 2018 At the request of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the leading ACE researchers at UW-Madison aggregated five years of statewide data, from 2011 through 2015, and broke out results for the four ZIP codes that cover the City of Racine. — John Schmid, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "Foxconn's promised jobs boom could miss neighboring city Racine," 6 Apr. 2018Recent Examples on the Web: Noun
Rather, Kitaj produced a hit-and-miss collection of images that amount to an aggregate of mug shots of famous intellectuals. — Peter Plagens, WSJ, "‘Confessions of an Old Jewish Painter’ Review: One Final Vanity Project," 27 July 2018 The error chopped an aggregate of about $9,000 from what some of the state’s poorest parents were rightfully owed. — Joshua Miller, BostonGlobe.com, "Revenue Dept. mistakenly underpays child support for about 70 parents," 11 May 2018 In aggregate, these five vendors alone accounted for the vast majority of sales: 88.7 percent according to Gartner, 77.7 percent per IDC. — Peter Bright, Ars Technica, "PC market appears to have grown for the first time since 2012," 13 July 2018 Bayern have won four of the six previous last-four ties between the two clubs, starting with a 3-1 aggregate victory when the clubs first met in 1976. — Afp, chicagotribune.com, "Heynckes on Real Madrid draw: 'I hope Ronaldo does not have a good day'," 13 Apr. 2018 Most of these tests are limited—usually using one or two gates, and thus affecting only a few flights a day—although in aggregate, the CBP estimates as many as three million travelers have encountered facial recognition technology since mid-2017. — Barbara Peterson, Condé Nast Traveler, "The Future of Biometrics at the Airport," 20 Sep. 2018 Which is just to say that, in the aggregate, Trump is far from a maniac who the Republican establishment is restraining. — Matthew Yglesias, Vox, "There never were any “adults in the room”," 21 Dec. 2018 While crediting the French in the aggregate for victory, Mr. Philbrick finds fault with individual French commanders. — Alan Taylor, WSJ, "‘In the Hurricane’s Eye’ Review: How France Freed the U.S.," 18 Oct. 2018 There it is used as an aggregate for concrete and asphalt, according to Chris Prasad, owner of Phoenix Recycling. — Kendra Parks, NOLA.com, "City suspends glass recycling at drop-off center starting April 14," 11 Apr. 2018These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'aggregate.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Keep scrolling for more
Keep scrolling for more
More Definitions for aggregate
aggregate
adjective
English Language Learners Definition of aggregate
(Entry 1 of 3)
: formed by adding together two or more amounts
aggregate
verb
English Language Learners Definition of aggregate (Entry 2 of 3)
formal
: to join or combine into a single group
: to equal a specified number or amount
aggregate
noun
English Language Learners Definition of aggregate (Entry 3 of 3)
formal
: a total amount
See the full definition for aggregate in the English Language Learners Dictionary
aggregate
verb
ag·gre·gate
| \ ˈa-gri-ˌgāt
\
\
aggregated;
aggregating
Kids Definition of aggregate
(Entry 1 of 2)
: to collect or gather into a mass or whole
The particles of sand aggregated into giant dunes.
aggregate
noun
ag·gre·gate
| \ ˈa-gri-gət
\
\
Kids Definition of aggregate (Entry 2 of 2)
1
: a mass or body of units or parts
The rock is an aggregate of several minerals.
2
: the whole sum or amount
They won by an aggregate of 30 points.
aggregate
adjective
ag·gre·gate
| \ ˈag-ri-gət
\
\
Medical Definition of aggregate
(Entry 1 of 3)
: formed by the collection of units or particles into a body, mass, or amount
Other Words from aggregate
aggregation
\ ˌag-ri-ˈgā-shən
\
noun
\
noun
It is now known that these calcifications represent focal aggregations of calcium hydroxyapatite …
— Medical Radiography & Photography, 1982
aggregate
transitive verb
ag·gre·gate
| \ -ˌgāt
\
\
aggregated;
aggregating
Medical Definition of aggregate (Entry 2 of 3)
: to collect or gather into a mass or whole
aggregated human albumin
aggregate
noun
ag·gre·gate
| \ -gət
\
\
Medical Definition of aggregate (Entry 3 of 3)
: a mass or body of units or parts somewhat loosely associated with one another
Keep scrolling for more
aggregate
adjective
ag·gre·gate
| \ ˈa-grə-gət
\
\
Legal Definition of aggregate
(Entry 1 of 3)
: taken as a total
aggregate liability
aggregate
verb
ag·gre·gate
| \ ˈa-grə-ˌgāt
\
\
aggregated;
aggregating
Legal Definition of aggregate (Entry 2 of 3)
1
: to combine or gather into a whole
class members may aggregate their individual claims
— compare join
2
: to amount to
an award aggregating $100,000
: to form an aggregate
they may not aggregate if their claims are regarded as “separate and distinct”— J. M. Landers et al.
aggregate
noun
ag·gre·gate
| \ ˈa-grə-gət
\
\
Legal Definition of aggregate (Entry 3 of 3)
1
: total amount
may sue in federal court if the aggregate of the claims exceeds $75,000
2
: a whole made up of individual units
the aggregate of operative facts
Keep scrolling for more
Comments on aggregate
What made you want to look up aggregate? Please tell us where you read or heard it (including the quote, if possible).
Test Your Vocabulary
Original Meanings Quiz
-
- Which of the following is the earliest known sense of the word awe?
Test your visual vocabulary with our 10-question challenge!
TAKE THE QUIZ
Test Your Knowledge - and learn some interesting things along the way.
TAKE THE QUIZLove words? Need even more definitions?
Merriam-Webster unabridgedWords at Play
Ask the Editors
Word Games
-
Original Meanings Quiz
A quiz for the pedantic and those annoyed by them!
Take the quiz -
A Green Quiz
How many questions can you answer about the word "green"?
Take the quiz -
Name That Thing
Test your visual vocabulary with our 10-question challenge!
Take the quiz -
Word Winder's CrossWinder
Play the game
Share aggregate
Resources for aggregate