Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To collect from different places; assemble.
  • intransitive verb To cause to come together; convene.
  • intransitive verb To draw (something or someone) closer to oneself.
  • intransitive verb To draw into small folds or puckers, as by pulling a thread through cloth.
  • intransitive verb To contract and wrinkle (the brow).
  • intransitive verb To harvest or pick.
  • intransitive verb To conclude or infer, as from evidence.
  • intransitive verb To summon up; muster.
  • intransitive verb To accumulate (something) gradually; amass.
  • intransitive verb To attract or be the center of attraction for.
  • intransitive verb To gain by a process of gradual increase.
  • intransitive verb To pick up or collect (molten glass) using a tool in glass blowing.
  • intransitive verb To come together in a group; assemble.
  • intransitive verb To accumulate.
  • intransitive verb To grow or increase by degrees.
  • intransitive verb To come to a head, as a boil; fester.
  • intransitive verb To forage for wild foodstuffs.
  • noun The act or an instance of gathering.
  • noun Something gathered, especially.
  • noun A small fold or pucker made by gathering cloth.
  • noun A mass of molten glass collected on the end of a blowpipe or other glass-blowing tool.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In mech., to fit into; fit together: used in speaking of the teeth of gears.
  • Nautical, to overtake another vessel: a vessel is said to gather on another when it is overtaking it.
  • noun A plait or fold in cloth held in position by a thread drawn through it.
  • noun A slight forward inclination of the axle-spindle of a carriage, to insure the even running of the wheel.
  • To bring or draw together; assemble; congregate; collect; make a collection or aggregation of.
  • To take by selection from among other things; sort out or separate, as what is desired or valuable; cull; pick; pluck.
  • To bring closer together the component parts of; draw into smaller compass, as a garment; hence, to make folds in, as the brow by contracting it.
  • Hence In sewing, to full or shirr (a piece of cloth) by running a thread through it and then drawing it in small puckers by means of the thread.
  • In building, to contract or close in, as a drain or chimney.
  • To acquire or gain, with or without effort; accumulate; win.
  • To accumulate by saving and bringing together; amass.
  • To collect or learn by observation or reasoning; infer; conclude.
  • To bring into order; arrange; settle.
  • In glass manufacturing, to collect from the pot (a mass of molten glass) on the end of an iron tube, preparatory to blowing. This operation is performed by a workman called a gatherer. See gatherer, 6.
  • To reap, cull, crop.
  • To hoard, heap up.
  • To collect; congregate; come together: as, the clouds gather in the west.
  • To increase; grow larger by accretion.
  • To come to a head, as a sore in suppurating.
  • Synonyms To come together, muster, cluster.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To bring together; to collect, as a number of separate things, into one place, or into one aggregate body; to assemble; to muster; to congregate.
  • transitive verb To pick out and bring together from among what is of less value; to collect, as a harvest; to harvest; to cull; to pick off; to pluck.
  • transitive verb To accumulate by collecting and saving little by little; to amass; to gain; to heap up.
  • transitive verb To bring closely together the parts or particles of; to contract; to compress; to bring together in folds or plaits, as a garment; also, to draw together, as a piece of cloth by a thread; to pucker; to plait.
  • transitive verb To derive, or deduce, as an inference; to collect, as a conclusion, from circumstances that suggest, or arguments that prove; to infer; to conclude.
  • transitive verb obsolete To gain; to win.
  • transitive verb (Arch.) To bring together, or nearer together, in masonry, as where the width of a fireplace is rapidly diminished to the width of the flue, or the like.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English getheren, gaderen, from Old English gadrian; see ghedh- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English gaderen, from Old English gaderian ("to gather, assemble"), from Proto-Germanic *gadurōnan (“to bring together, unite, gather”), frequentative of Proto-Germanic *gadōnan (“to hold together”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰhedʰ- (“to unite, assemble, keep”). Cognate with Dutch gaderen, garen ("to gather"), Middle High German gadern ("to gather"), Old Frisian gadia ("to unite"), German begatten ("to mate"), Albanian gjedhe ("model, sample; to choose, prefer"). Compare also Old English gæd ("society, fellowship, union"). More at good.

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Examples

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  • I will collect the sticks later.

    February 15, 2007

  • he will gather berries

    February 15, 2007

  • In glassmaking, a mass of molten glass (sometimes called a gob) collected on the end of a blowpipe, pontil, or gathering iron; also a verb to describe collecting molten glass on the end of a tool.

    November 9, 2007