Exacervation

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The act of heaping up. obsolete, uncountable, usually

    "You might as well try to persuade me that any other but Satan dictated the Black List; the very style and manner of the thing, the grandeur of the conception, the multiplication, the conglomeration, the exacervation, (as a body might say to speak plainly) the cumulative exacervation of lies, the heaping likes upon lies as the Titan's heaped Pelion upon Ossa, when they wanted to scale and insult the heavens; I say, all this condensation of falsehood, all this accumulation of falsehood, all this sublimity of falsehood, could only be attained by one pen in the universe, and proclaims the author Satan!"

  2. 2
    A recurrence of a symptom; paroxysm. uncommon, uncountable, usually

    "Recovery now progressively succeeded, as after the former eruptions of matter, for several days, during which his appetite improved, and his strength increased, so that he sat up by day, and rested pretty well at night, still slight evening exacervation continued, followed by night sweats; bowels costive requiring the daily administration of laxitives."

Example

More examples

"You might as well try to persuade me that any other but Satan dictated the Black List; the very style and manner of the thing, the grandeur of the conception, the multiplication, the conglomeration, the exacervation, (as a body might say to speak plainly) the cumulative exacervation of lies, the heaping likes upon lies as the Titan's heaped Pelion upon Ossa, when they wanted to scale and insult the heavens; I say, all this condensation of falsehood, all this accumulation of falsehood, all this sublimity of falsehood, could only be attained by one pen in the universe, and proclaims the author Satan!"

Etymology

From Latin exacervō (“to heap up exceedingly”), from acervus. See ex-, and acervate.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.