"Warwick was unable to perceive much change in the market-house. […] There might have been a slight accretion of the moss and lichen on the shingled roof."
— 1900, Charles W[addell] Chesnutt, chapter I, in The House Behind the Cedars, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company […], →OCLC, page 3:
"The immense accretion of flesh which had descended on her in middle life like a flood of lava on a doomed city had changed her from a plump active little woman with a neatly-turned foot and ankle into something as vast and august as a natural phenomenon."
— 1920, Edith Wharton, chapter IV, in The Age of Innocence, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC, book I, page 25:
"[…] Plants doe nouriſh; Inanimate Bodies doe not: They haue an Accretion, but no Alimentation."
— 1627 (indicated as 1626), Francis [Bacon], “VII. Century. [Experiments in Consort, Touching the Affinities, and Differences, betweene Plants and Inanimate Bodies.]”, in Sylua Syluarum: Or A Naturall Historie. In Ten Centuries. […], London: […] William Rawley […]; [p]rinted by J[ohn] H[aviland] for William Lee […], →OCLC, paragraph 602, page 154:
"God hath from the beginning made all the Kindes of Hard, and Heavie, and Diaphanous Bodies that are, and of ſuch Figure and magnitude as he thought fit; but hovv ſmall ſoever, they may by accretion become greater in the Mine, or perhaps by generation, though vve knovv not hovv."
— 1678, Thomas Hobbes, “Of Gravity and Gravitation”, in Decameron Physiologicum: Or, Ten Dialogues of Natural Philosophy. […], London: […] J[ames] C[ottrel] for W[illiam] Crook[e] […], →OCLC, page 94:
"Suddenly starting from a proposition, exactly and sharply defined, in terms of utmost simplicity and clearness, he rejected the forms of customary logic, and by a crystalline process of accretion, built up his ocular demonstrations in forms of gloomiest and ghastliest grandeur, or in those of the most airy and delicious beauty—so minutely and distinctly, yet so rapidly, that the attention which was yielded to him was chained till it stood among his wonderful creations—till he himself dissolved the spell, and brought his hearers back to common and base existence, by vulgar fancies or exhibitions of the ignoblest passion."
— 1849 October 9, Rufus Wilmot Griswold, “Edgar Poe”, in N[athaniel] Parker Willis, Hurry-graphs; or, Sketches of Scenery, Celebrities and Society, Taken from Life, 2nd edition, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner, published 1851, →OCLC, page 241: