Excrescence definition

ĭk-skrĕsəns
excrescences
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An outgrowth or enlargement, especially an abnormal one, such as a wart.
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A usually unwanted or unnecessary accretion.
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(now rare) A normal outgrowth; natural appendage, as a fingernail.
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An abnormal or disfiguring outgrowth or addition, as a bunion.
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An outgrowth or enlargement, especially an abnormal one, such as a wart.
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Something, usually abnormal, which grows out of something else.
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A disfiguring or unwanted mark or adjunct.
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(phonetics) Epenthesis of a consonant, e.g., warmth as [ˈwɔrmpθ] (adding a [p] between [m] and [θ]), or -t.
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Other Word Forms

Noun

Singular:
excrescence
Plural:
excrescences

Origin of excrescence

  • Middle English from Latin excrēscentia from neuter pl. of excrēscēns excrēscent- present participle of excrēscere to grow out ex- ex- crēscere to grow ker-2 in Indo-European roots

    From American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition

  • Middle English, early 15th century, in sense “(action of) growing out (of something else)”. 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).

    From Wiktionary

Excrescence Sentence Examples

  • Occasionally a knob or excrescence, formed by the residue of the glass beyond the point at which the base has been pinched together, remains as a silent witness of the process.

  • The Disputation made him see that his protest against the abuses of Indulgences was no criticism of an excrescence on the medieval ecclesiastical system, but an attack on its centre of existence.

  • Kropf, to many Teutonic languages for a swelling, excrescence, round head or top of anything; it appears also in Romanic languages derived from Teutonic, in Fr.

  • Population gathered about the southern front, probably using the material of the old city of Yenking, and the excrescence so formed was, in 1 544, enclosed by a wall and called the "outer city."

  • The bourgeois revolutionists of France had all been philosophes, but their philosophy had at least paid lip-service to " reason "; the Russian revolutionists who formed the majority of the first and second Dumas, as though inspired by the exalted nonsense preached by Tolstoi, 1 subordinated reason to sentiment, until - their impracticable temper having been advertised to all the world - it became easy for the government to treat them as a mere excrescence on the national life, a malignant growth to be removed by a necessary operation.

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