accrue

present singular third person accrues · participle present accruing · participle past accrued · past accrued

1. intransitiveTo increase, to rise

   And though pow’r fail’d, her Courage did accrue

   1590, Edmund Spenser, “(please specify the book)”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC

   Synonyms: rise

2. intransitiveTo reach or come to by way of increase; to arise or spring up because of growth or result, especially as the produce of money lent.

   Environmental benefits that accrue to the area.

   3 more examples

   1879, Benjamin Vaughan Abbott, Dictionary of Terms and Phrases used in American or English Jurisprudence: ACCRUE Interest accrues to principal.

   The great and essential advantages accruing to society from the freedom of the press

   1772, Junius, The Letters of Junius, Preface

   The abolition of exploitation meant, in his view, not that workers should receive the equivalent of what they produced, but that the surplus value they do not receive in wages should accrue to society in the form of fresh investments, emergency reserves, payment for necessary 'unproductive' services, administration, etc., plus provision for those unable to work.

   1978 [1976], Leszek Kołakowski, translated by P[aul] S[teven] Falla, Main Currents of Marxism, volume I: The Founders, Oxford: Clarendon Press, translation of Główne nurty marksizmu: powstanie (in Polish), →ISBN, →OCLC, page 333

3. intransitiveaccountingTo be incurred as a result of the passage of time.

   The monthly financial statements show all the actual but only some of the accrued expenses.

4. transitiveTo accumulate.

   He has accrued nine sick days.

   1 more example

   We, who are dead and gone, shall bear no Part, In all the Pleasures, no shall we feel the smart, Which to that other Mortal shall accrew, Whom of our Matter Time shall mould anew.

   1709, John Dryden, "Lucretius: A Poem against the Fear of Death" (lines 26-29), published in a pamphlet of the same name with an Ode in Memory of Mrs. Ann Killebrew

   Synonyms: add up

5. intransitivelawTo become an enforceable and permanent right.

   Synonyms: inure

plural accrues

1. obsoleteSomething that accrues; advantage accruing