excrescence

English

WOTD – 1 March 2006

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).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ɛkˈskɹɛsəns/, /ɪkˈskɹɛsəns/

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Noun

excrescence (plural excrescences)

1. Something, usually abnormal, which grows out of something else.
   • 1847 October 16, Currer Bell [pseudonym; Charlotte Brontë], chapter VII, in Jane Eyre. An Autobiography. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), London: Smith, Elder, and Co., […], →OCLC:

     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.

   • 1903 July, Jack London, “The Sounding of the Call”, in The Call of the Wild, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., →OCLC, page 219:

     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.

   • 1907 April, E[dward] M[organ] Forster, chapter XXXIII, in The Longest Journey, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, part III (Wiltshire), page 336:

     Perhaps he meant that towns are after all excrescences, grey fluxions, where men, hurrying to find one another, have lost themselves.

   • 1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter XXXI, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz […], →OCLC, page 234:

     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.

2. A disfiguring or unwanted mark or adjunct.
   • 1982 December 11, Andrea Loewenstein, “The Joys of Community or Holiday-itis Strikes Back”, in Gay Community News, volume 10, number 21, page 12:

     Being bussum buddies, the two friends often communicated with mere exchange of psychic forces, verbal communication having been rendered unnecessary excrescence.

4. (phonetics) The epenthesis of a consonant, e.g., warmth as [ˈwɔrmpθ] (adding a [p] between [m] and [θ]), or -t (Etymology 2).

   Synonym: vyanjanabhakti

   Antonyms: svarabhakti, anaptyxis

   Hypernym: epenthesis

Hyponyms

• (phonetic): linking consonant

Related terms

• excrescency
• excrescent

Translations

something, usually abnormal, which grows out of something else

• Bulgarian: израстък (bg) m (izrastǎk)
• Dutch: uitwas (nl), exces (nl)
• Finnish: kasvannainen, kohouma (fi)
• French: excès (fr) m, excroissance (fr) f
• Galician: excrecencia (gl) f
• Hungarian: kinövés (hu)
• Latin: tūber (la) n
• Maori: pukuwhenewhene (on the trunk of a tree)
• Polish: narośl (pl) f
• Portuguese: excrescência (pt) f
• Russian: отро́сток (ru) m (otróstok), нарост (ru) m (narost)
• Swedish: utväxt (sv) c

epenthesis of a consonant

• Hungarian: inetimologikus mássalhangzó(betoldás)

See also

• (phonetic): intervocalic