Accumulative

a. [f. L. accumulāt- ppl. stem of accumulāre: see ACCUMULATE + -IVE.] Characterized by accumulation.

  1.  Arising from accumulation or successive additions of particulars; cumulative, collective.

a. 1651.  Cleveland, Rupertismus, 167.

1652.  Milton, Lett. of State, Wks. 1847, 596/2. For more ample and accumulative satisfaction, and to remove all Scruples from your Excellency.

1662.  Fuller, Worthies, II. 211. The Distinction of Accumulative and Constructive Treason was coyned, and caused his Destruction.

1766.  Hist. Europe, in Ann. Reg., 9/1. No particular crime was specified in the sentence against Sully, but a general accumulative charge in which treason was comprehended.

1862.  Whateley, in Life & Corr. (1866), II. 392. Such persons cannot understand the force of accumulative proof.

  2.  Of things: So constituted as to accumulate or increase in amount; as money does by the continuous addition of the interest to the principal.

1857.  Ruskin, Pol. Econ. Art., ii. 96. Thus the science of nations is to be accumulative from father to son: each learning a little more and a little more; each receiving all that was known, and adding its own gain: the history and poetry of nations are to be accumulative; each generation treasuring the history and songs of its ancestors, adding its own history and its own songs: and the art of nations is to be accumulative, just as science and history are; the work of living men not superseding, but building itself upon the work of the past.

1863.  Morning Star, 7 Jan., 6. The sinking fund is accumulative.

  3.  Of persons: Given to accumulate or amass.

1817.  Coleridge, Poems, 139. Taylor is eminently discursive, accumulative, and (to use one of his own words) agglomerative.