congeries n : a sum total of many heterogenous things taken together [syn: aggregate, conglomeration]

English

Etymology

• From Latin congeriēs ‘heap, mass, pile’, from congerĕre ‘carry together’.

Pronunciation

• italbrac RP /ˈkɒnʤəri:z/ or /kənˈʤɪəri:z/
• italbrac US /ˈkɑːnʤəri:z/

Noun

1. A collection or aggregation of disparate items.

Quotations

• 1898 — William McKinley, Second State of the Union Address

  The world has seen the postal system developed from a congeries of independent and exclusive services into a well-ordered union, of which all countries enjoy the manifold benefits.

• 1928 — Virginia Woolf, Orlando

  By short cuts known to him, he made his way now through the vast congeries of rooms and staircases to the banqueting-hall, five acres distant on the other side of the house.

• 1932 — H. P. Lovecraft, Dreams in the Witch-House

  Two of the less irrelevantly moving things - a rather large congeries of iridescent, prolately spheroidal bubbles and a very much smaller polyhedron of unknown colours and rapidly shifting surface angles - seemed to take notice of him and follow him about or float ahead as he changed position...

• 2003 — Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason (Penguin 2004, p. 243)

  That whole congeries of values was now in question.

• 2005 - John Banville, The Sea (Picador 2005, p216)

  It was not what I was that I disliked, I mean the singular, essential me - although I grant that even the notion of an essential, singular self is problematic - but the congeries of affects, inclinations, received ideas, class tics, that my birth and upbringing had bestowed on me in place of a personality.

Anschluss, accumulation, acervation, addition, affiliation, agglomerate, agglomeration, agglutination, aggregate, aggregation, agreement, alliance, amalgamation, amassment, articulation, assemblage, assembly, assimilation, association, blend, blending, bond, bracketing, cabal, cartel, centralization, chunk, clustering, coalescence, coalition, collection, combination, combine, combo, communication, company, composition, concatenation, concourse, concurrence, confederacy, confederation, confluence, conglobation, conglomerate, conglomeration, congregation, conjugation, conjunction, connection, consolidation, conspiracy, convergence, copulation, coupling, cumulation, ecumenism, embodiment, encompassment, enosis, federalization, federation, fusion, gathering, glomeration, gob, group, hookup, hunk, inclusion, incorporation, integration, intercommunication, intercourse, interlinking, joinder, joining, jointure, junction, junta, knotting, league, liaison, linkage, linking, lump, marriage, mass, meeting, meld, melding, merger, merging, muster, package, package deal, pairing, ruck, snowball, solidification, splice, stockpile, symbiosis, syncretism, syndication, syneresis, synthesis, tie, tie-in, tie-up, unification, union, wad, wedding, yoking