gather.
To collect normally separate things.
Meaning & usage
To collect normally separate things.
I've been gathering ideas from the people I work with.
She bent down to gather the reluctant cat from beneath the chair.
To collect normally separate things. Especially, to harvest food.
We went to gather some blackberries from the nearby lane.
To collect normally separate things. To accumulate over time, to amass little by little.
Over the years he'd gathered a considerable collection of mugs.
To collect normally separate things. To congregate, or assemble.
People gathered round as he began to tell his story.
To collect normally separate things. To grow gradually larger by accretion.
To bring parts of a whole closer.
She gathered the shawl about her as she stepped into the cold.
To bring parts of a whole closer. To add pleats or folds to a piece of cloth, normally to reduce its width.
A gown should be gathered around the top so that it will remain shaped.
To bring parts of a whole closer. To bring stitches closer together.
Be careful not to stretch or gather your knitting.
If you want to emphasise the shape, it is possible to gather the waistline.
To bring parts of a whole closer. To bring together, or nearer together, in masonry, as for example where the width of a fireplace is rapidly diminished to the width of the flue.
To bring parts of a whole closer. To haul in; to take up.
to gather the slack of a rope
To infer or conclude; to know from a different source.
From his silence, I gathered that things had not gone well.
I gather from Aunty May that you had a good day at the match.
To be filled with pus
Salt water can help boils to gather and then burst.
To collect molten glass on the end of a tool.
To gain; to win.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English gaderen, from Old English gaderian (“to gather, assemble”), from Proto-West Germanic *gadurōn (“to bring together, unite, gather”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰedʰ- (“to unite, assemble, keep”).
A plait or fold in cloth, made by drawing a thread through it; a pucker.
The inclination forward of the axle journals to keep the wheels from working outward.
The soffit or under surface of the masonry required in gathering. See gather.
A blob of molten glass collected on the end of a blowpipe.
A gathering.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English gaderen, from Old English gaderian (“to gather, assemble”), from Proto-West Germanic *gadurōn (“to bring together, unite, gather”), from Proto-Indo-European *gʰedʰ- (“to unite, assemble, keep”).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.