0 to gradually increase or grow by the addition of new layers or parts, or to cause something to do this:
In the 18th century, the philosopher Immanuel Kant proposed that planets like Earth quietly, steadily accreted over eons from a vast cloud of dust.
The microbes could have originated in the lake and become trapped as the water refroze or accreted to the bottom of the overlying glacier.
The plot doesn't move so much as accrete, full of the wisdom of well-lived ordinary lives.
If the sea level rises faster than marsh grasses are able to move back and accrete sand, the marsh will disappear.
Observations suggest new stars accrete material more slowly in the Orion Nebula than elsewhere.
Biographers face the challenge of scraping away the accreted perspectives to present their subject from their own point of view.
