Definitions

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

  • transitive verb To form into a globe or ball.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Formed or gathered into a ball or a small spherical body; combined into one mass.
  • To collect or form into a ball; combine into one mass, especially a spherical mass.
  • To assume a round or roundish form; become united in one round mass.

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

  • transitive verb To collect or form into a ball or rounded mass; to gather or mass together.
  • adjective Collected into, or forming, a rounded mass or ball.

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

  • adjective shaped like or formed into a ball.
  • verb transitive To form into a globe or ball.

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

  • verb assume a globular shape

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin conglobāre, conglobāt- : com-, com- + globus, ball.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

from Latin conglobare, from com- ("together") + globus ("ball")

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Examples

  • These absorbent vessels are also furnished with glands, which are called conglobate glands; whose use is not at present sufficiently investigated; but it is probable that they resemble the conglomerate glands both in structure and in use, except that their absorbent mouths are for the conveniency of situation placed at a greater distance from the body of the gland.

    Zoonomia, Vol. I Or, the Laws of Organic Life Erasmus Darwin 1766

  • The mouths of the absorbent system drink up a part or the whole of these fluids, and carry them forwards by their living power to their respective glands, which are called conglobate glands.

    Zoonomia, Vol. I Or, the Laws of Organic Life Erasmus Darwin 1766

  • * The leaf, examined with a microscope at the instant we drew it up from the water, did not present, it is true, those conglobate glands, or those opaque points, which the parts of fructification in the genera of ulva and fucus contain; but how often do we find seaweeds in such a state that we cannot yet distinguish any trace of seeds in their transparent parenchyma.

    Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America 1851

  • Higher up the moor, ferns of ampler size occur, and what seems to be rushes, which bear atop conglobate panicles on their smooth leafless stems; but at its lower edge little else appears than the higher Acrogens, -- ferns and their allies.

    The Testimony of the Rocks or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed Hugh Miller 1829

  • The leaf, examined with a microscope at the instant we drew it up from the water, did not present, it is true, those conglobate glands, or those opaque points, which the parts of fructification in the genera of ulva and fucus contain; but how often do we find seaweeds in such a state that we cannot yet distinguish any trace of seeds in their transparent parenchyma.

    Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Year 1799-1804 — Volume 1 Alexander von Humboldt 1814

  • The absorbed fluids in their course to the veins in the scrophula are arrested in the lymphatic or conglobate glands; which swell, and after

    Zoonomia, Vol. II Or, the Laws of Organic Life Erasmus Darwin 1766

  • The difference between scrophulous tumours, and those before described, consists in this; that in those either glands of different kinds were diseased, or the mouths only of the lymphatic glands were become torpid; whereas in scrophula the conglobate glands themselves become tumid, and generally suppurate after a great length of time, when they acquire new sensibility.

    Zoonomia, Vol. II Or, the Laws of Organic Life Erasmus Darwin 1766

  • _ When a scirrhus affects any gland of no great extent or sensibility, it is, after a long period of time, liable to suppurate without inducing fever, like the indolent tumors of the conglobate or lymphatic glands above mentioned; whence collections of matter are often found after death both in men and other animals; as in the liver of swine, which have been fed with the grounds of fermented mixtures in the distilleries.

    Zoonomia, Vol. II Or, the Laws of Organic Life Erasmus Darwin 1766

  • The conglomerate glands open their mouths immediately into the sanguiferous vessels, which bring the blood, from whence they absorb their respective fluids, quite up to the gland: but these conglobate glands collect their adapted fluids from very distant membranes, or cysts, by means of mouths furnished with long necks for this purpose; and which are called lacteals, or lymphatics.

    Zoonomia, Vol. I Or, the Laws of Organic Life Erasmus Darwin 1766

  • As those lymphatic vessels consist generally of a long neck or mouth, which drinks up its appropriated fluid, and of a conglobate gland, in which this fluid undergoes some change, it happens, that sometimes the mouth of the lymphatic, and sometimes the belly or glandular part of it, becomes totally or partially paralytic.

    Zoonomia, Vol. I Or, the Laws of Organic Life Erasmus Darwin 1766

Comments

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  • Cool word & fun to say - conglobation! Simply means "To form into a globe or ball" per the American Heritage Dictionary.

    January 6, 2007

  • The savvy gardener knows well that cabbages are one of the more conglobate of all vegetables.

    February 21, 2011