Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The act or process of concreting into a mass; coalescence.
  • noun The state of having been concreted.
  • noun A solid hard mass.
  • noun Geology A rounded mass of mineral matter found in sedimentary rock.
  • noun Medicine A solid mass, usually composed of inorganic material, formed in a cavity or tissue of the body; a calculus.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In old chem., reduction of a liquid to a solid, commonly by partial evaporation.
  • noun The act of growing together or becoming united in one mass; concrescence; coalescence.
  • noun A mass of solid matter formed by a growing together, or by congelation, condensation, coagulation, conglomeration, or induration; a clot; a lump; a nodule: as, “concretions of slime,”
  • noun Specifically In geology, an aggregation of mineral matter, usually calcareous or silicious, in concentric layers, so arranged as to give rise to a form approaching the spherical, but often much flattened.
  • noun In logic: The state of being concrete; concreteness.
  • noun The act of determination, or of rendering a concept more concrete or determinate by adding to the marks it contains.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The process of concreting; the process of uniting or of becoming united, as particles of matter into a mass; solidification.
  • noun A mass or nodule of solid matter formed by growing together, by congelation, condensation, coagulation, induration, etc.; a clot; a lump; a calculus.
  • noun (Geol.) A rounded mass or nodule produced by an aggregation of the material around a center.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The process of aggregating or coalescing into a mass.
  • noun A solid, hard mass formed by a process of aggregation or coalescence.
  • noun geology A rounded mass of a mineral, sometimes found in sedimentary rock or on the ocean floor.
  • noun The action of making something concrete or the result of such an action.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an increase in the density of something
  • noun the formation of stonelike objects within a body organ (e.g., the kidneys)
  • noun the union of diverse things into one body or form or group; the growing together of parts
  • noun a hard lump produced by the concretion of mineral salts; found in hollow organs or ducts of the body

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin concretio.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word concretion.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • Lake Superior concretions are really beautiful. Most of them are spheroid or like a grouping of spheres. Most have concentric rings on their surface.

    February 11, 2008