One May At A Time: An Efflorescence of Vocabulary: Collectable Words for National Pack Rat Day: May 17

National Pack Rat Day is May 17th. Here's a hoard of highly collectable words that'll help you amass an impressive vocabulary.

Read the related article: Highly Collectable Words for National Pack Rat Day
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. stockpile
    something kept back or saved for future use
    A number of things are kept there: stockpiles of metal used by the convicts to manufacture automobile license plates, lumber, old machinery, baseball paraphernalia—and also an unpainted wooden gallows that smells faintly of pine. In Cold Blood
    The word stockpile has a militaristic undertone to it which lends a certain gravitas to the practice, never mind if what is being stockpiled is an assortment of every spork ever made or the full run of Alf stickers in their original packaging.
  2. cache
    a secret store of valuables or money
    Underneath the sawdust—and he knew exactly where—were caches of nutshells, seeds, bones, fruit, and gristle. The House of the Scorpion
    Cache comes from French Canadian trapper’s slang for “hiding place.” The term later came to refer to the hidden items as well as the actual hiding place itself.
  3. garner
    acquire or deserve by one's efforts or actions
    The fanfare surrounding their unorthodox proposal garnered more than likes and retweets, however, as businesses and generous South Africans offered to help pay for the couple’s wedding, honeymoon and gifts. Fox News
    Garner is a word that is usually used in the sense of picking up or gathering, as in the phrase "to garner praise." It originated in the late 15th century, meaning "to store grain."
  4. accrue
    grow by addition
    The more time we spent at church, she reckoned, the more blessings we accrued, like a Starbucks Rewards Card. Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
    Accrue is another word with a similar passive sense like garner. Accrue means to "gain by increment" and emphasizes the slow growth of carefully maintained and curated collections. The value of an object may accrue without the collector doing anything at all, other than keeping it over a period of time.
  5. amass
    collect or gather
    During my first twenty or so years in prison, I accumulated very few possessions, but in the last few years I had amassed enough property — mainly books and papers — to make up for previous decades. Long Walk to Freedom
  6. accumulate
    get or gather together
    The idea of what it means to be poor changed in the late sixties, when American manufacturers began to import their products from overseas and we began to accumulate “things.” Bad Boy
    Accumulate, a word from the early 16th century, literally means “to heap up, amass” from Latin cumulus, “heap.” This is the same root that gives cumulus clouds their name, because the clouds resemble a big pile of fluffiness.
  7. hoard
    a secret store of valuables or money
    It was one of the most valuable magic items in my inventory, looted from the hoard of a red dragon I’d slain on Gygax. Ready Player One: A Novel
    A hoard originally referred to "a treasure, a valuable stock or store." To hoard items is to zealously collect and vigilantly hold onto them. Hoard is often used to connote a somewhat obsessive degree of collecting.
  8. aggregate
    gather in a mass, sum, or whole
    Most grocery retailers buy from third party distribution companies, which aggregate inventory from thousands of manufacturers and run high volume facilities on very slim margins. Salon
  9. collect
    get or gather together
    Ifemelu imagined them when they traveled: they would collect unusual things and fill their homes with them, unpolished evidence of their polish. Americanah
  10. acquisition
    the act of contracting or assuming possession of something
    The Ptolemys devoted much of their enormous wealth to the acquisition of every Greek book, as well as works from Africa, Persia, India, Israel and other parts of the world. Cosmos
    Perhaps the word that best sums up all this behavior is acquisition. Dating from the 14th century, this word contains an element derived from the Latin quaerere, which means “seek to obtain.” Hoarders and collectors both seek to obtain many, many things.
  11. squirrel away
    save up, as for future use
    “Even squirrels, who ‘ squirrel away’ acorns for the winter, may prefer young tree bark for a change of pace,” he said. Washington Times
  12. possession
    anything owned
    I’m supposed to have accumulated things by now: possessions, responsibilities, achievements, experience and wisdom. Cat's Eye
Created on Thu May 10 20:29:17 EDT 2018 (updated Thu May 04 13:00:10 EDT 2023)

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