cumulative

adjective

cu·mu·la·tive ˈkyü-myə-lə-tiv

-ˌlā-

Synonyms of cumulative next

: increasing by successive additions

: made up of accumulated parts

: tending to prove the same point

cumulative evidence

: taking effect upon completion of another penal sentence

a cumulative sentence

: increasing in severity with repetition of the offense

cumulative penalty

: formed by the addition of new material of the same kind

a cumulative book index

: summing or integrating overall data or values of a random variable less than or less than or equal to a specified value

cumulative normal distribution

cumulative frequency distribution

finance

: to be added if not paid when normally due to the next payment or a future payment

cumulative preferred dividends

cumulative interest

of stock : bearing such a dividend

cumulative preferred stock

cumulatively adverb

cumulativeness noun

Examples of cumulative in a Sentence

… Game Boy, which first came out in 1989 as a monochrome handheld toy, has become the most successful of all of the systems, reaching cumulative sales of 110 million units to date … —

N'gai Croal, Newsweek, 28 May 2001

They began looking at the cumulative effect of stress and realized that, while there might have been an incident that finally triggered the madness, a series of previous events had lowered the soldier's emotional resistance. —

Michael Fleming and Roger Manvell, Psychology Today, July 1987

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. —

Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance," in Essays, 1841

a cumulative weight gain of 20 pounds over the course of a year

Recent Examples on the Web But Angela Tovar, hired by Lightfoot and retained by Johnson as the city’s chief sustainability officer, began working on the cumulative impacts study in 2020 and has advocated for greater oversight of industrial polluters. —

Michael Hawthorne, Chicago Tribune, 18 Sep. 2023 Shortly after, Singh collected her award from an emotional Ora, speaking about the cumulative impact of shame on women. —

Douglas Greenwood, Vogue, 31 Aug. 2023 What have the companies proposed A contract offer from Ford proposed a cumulative 10% pay raise over the course of the four-year contract, plus several lump-sum payments, including $6,000 to cover inflation. —

Tom Krisher, Fortune, 11 Sep. 2023 After taking them out of the packaging, testers slept on them for a cumulative 3,000 testing hours, and periodically checked in with reviews and reflections over the course of six months to see how their quality and performance changed. —

Olivia Avitt, Peoplemag, 9 Sep. 2023 The platform crossed the 1-year mark with over 100 million cumulative downloads of its mobile app. —

Tyler Shepherd, The Courier-Journal, 7 Sep. 2023 Its cumulative total after five weeks on release is $505 million. —

Patrick Frater, Variety, 3 Sep. 2023 Related The 20-position Songs of the Summer running tally tracks the most popular titles based on cumulative performance on the weekly streaming-, airplay- and sales-based Billboard Hot 100 chart from Memorial Day through Labor Day (this year encompassing charts dated June 10 through Sept. 9). —

Gary Trust, Billboard, 5 Sep. 2023 Patterns of cumulative moment (seismic energy) in the 48 hours before major historical earthquakes. —

Erik Klemetti, Discover Magazine, 30 Aug. 2023 See More

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'cumulative.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.