amass

Etymology

It is borrowed from Anglo-Norman amasser and Middle French amasser,^[2][3] a verb found in Old French from the 12th century,^[2][4][5] formed from a- (“to”), from Latin ad-,^[5][3] and masser (“to gather into a mass”), from masse (“lump, heap”),^[3][4] from Latin massa (“lump, mass”).^[5][6] Etymonline takes the noun back to Proto-Indo-European *mag- (“to knead, fashion, fit”).^[4] Hoad and Klein reconstruct an earlier Romance verb *admassō.^[6][7] The Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English also allow Medieval Latin amassō, which the OED merely compares, recording it from the 14th century.^[8][9][2] The OED compares Old Occitan amassar, Catalan amassar, Spanish amasar, Portuguese amassar and Italian ammassare.^[2] The noun is formed from the verb after amas and probably amasse.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

To gather together something immaterial: 1477, in Caxton's translation of Le Fèvre's History of Jason.^[2] Barnhart's first record is Caxton's Mirror of the World of 1481,^[10] and Etymonline dates the word to the late 15th century, as "to heap up for oneself".^[4]

Semantic evolution

The French verb already covered gathering livestock, objects, people and wealth, as well as accumulating experience and mustering an army.^[2] In 1481 Caxton used it both for heaping up material things and for accumulating wealth.^[2] People and troops followed in 1573, and the intransitive use, of things gathering in a mass, in 1572.^[2] Johnson (1755) gave the physical sense first, and then a figurative sense of adding one thing to another, "generally with some share of reproach, either of eagerness or indiscrimination".^[11] The Shorter Oxford lists the accumulation of wealth or resources first, and marks the general sense of heaping together as now rare and the intransitive as archaic.^[8] The noun, a large collection or heap, is recorded from 1567, and the Shorter Oxford ends it in the mid 18th century.^[2][8]

Timeline

• 1477 – to gather together something immaterial.^[2]
• 1481 – to heap up material things; to accumulate wealth for oneself.^[2][10]
• 1567 – noun, a large amount or collection.^[2]
• 1572 – intransitive, to gather in a mass.^[2]
• 1573 – to assemble people or concentrate troops.^[2]

Meanings

Verb

1. To accumulate something, especially wealth or resources, for oneself: She amassed a huge collection of rare stamps.^[3][12][2]
2. To gather things into a heap or mass; to bring together.^[3][12][2]
3. To assemble people, or to concentrate troops in one place.^[2]
4. To come together in a mass (archaic).^[3][8]

Noun

1. A large collection or quantity; a heap (obsolete, according to the Shorter Oxford, which dates it mid 16th to mid 18th century).^[8][2]

Word family

• amassable
• amasser
• amassment
• reamass

Related words

• mass

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
7. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
11. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
12. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins