cumulo-, cumul-, cumuli-

1. To collect or to obtain a large amount of something over a period of time.
2. To gather or to pile up; to amass.
3. Etymology: When, in colloquial speech, a man refers to the accumulating of a fortune as "making his pile", he is using exactly the same figurative language as that which first suggested the word accumulate.

Cumulus is Latin for "a heap" or "pile", and cumulare means "to pile up:. With the prefix ad, "to", we have accumulare, "to heap together", which is the source of our English word accumulate.

Tending to gather or to collect things.

1. Any increase in the concentration of a chemical in a biological organism over time, compared to the chemical's concentration in the environment.
2. An increase in the concentration of a pollutant from the environment to the first organism in a food chain.
3. The accumulation of chemicals by organisms present in the environment, most often expressed as the ratio of the concentration of a chemical in the organism to that in the medium, usually water.
4. The increasing concentration of a compound, usually applied to fat soluble pesticides; such as, DDT, in the bodies of living organisms at successively higher levels in the food chain.

Also known as: "biological amplification" and "biomagnification".

Plant or animal species that accumulates heavy metals or other environmental contaminants in its tissues, and can be used as an indicator of the presence of chronic pollution by these compounds, especially where amounts of pollutant in the environment are too low to be easily detectable.

The accumulation within living organisms of toxic substances occurring in the environment.