amass
Americanverb (used with object)
-
amasses,
present (3rd person singular)
-
amassed,
past participle, past
-
amassing
present participle
-
to gather for oneself; collect as one's own.
to amass a huge amount of money.
- Synonyms:
- accumulate
-
to collect into a mass or pile; gather.
He amassed his papers for his memoirs.
verb (used without object)
-
amasses,
present (3rd person singular)
-
amassed,
past participle, past
-
amassing
present participle
verb
-
(tr) to accumulate or collect (esp riches, etc)
-
to gather in a heap; bring together
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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amasssimple
-
amassessimple
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have amassedperfect
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has amassedperfect
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am amassingprogressive
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are amassingprogressive
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is amassingprogressive
-
have been amassingperfect progressive
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has been amassingperfect progressive
Past
-
amassedsimple
-
had amassedperfect
-
was amassingprogressive
-
were amassingprogressive
-
had been amassingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of amass
First recorded in 1475–85; from French amasser, equivalent to a- a- 5 ( def. ) + masse mass ( def. ) + -er, infinitive suffix
Explanation
Amass means bring together or assemble. It can be a real shock to enter a room and see your amassed friends shouting "Surprise!" Although the word amass should not be confused with "a mass," as in the thing you never want to hear has been found on your lung, they both derive from the Latin massa "lump." When you think about it, this makes sense. Whether soldiers or cancer cells, things that come together to form a whole — in this case, a tumor or an army — are amassed.
Vocabulary lists containing amass
Gimme, Gimme, Gimme
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Promises to Keep
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A Very Large Expanse of Sea
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Nvidia is helping amass hundreds of billions of dollars of financing for AI infrastructure.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 20, 2026
Vaserstein, who took years to amass millions of followers with funny man-on-the-street interviews, was pleased with the success.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 2, 2026
But you don’t need access to startup shares to amass significant money in these accounts.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 26, 2026
It’s tough to say if SpaceX will amass enough spectrum that it becomes attractive to one of the big network carriers as they consider their future bandwidth needs.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 25, 2026
Charles’s long-range goal was to write the huge book he had intended from the beginning, including all the material and evidence he had amassed and would continue to amass about evolution by natural selection.
From "Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith" by Deborah Heiligman
Our critic noted that “the exhibition amasses a remarkable range of portable abstract objects.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 26, 2026
William amasses a mighty army to fight Harold for the crown, and the two sides meet at the Battle of Hastings.
From BBC ● Jul. 11, 2026
That window usually amasses the largest audience in the regular season outside of Thanksgiving and Christmas Day games.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 15, 2024
Paul Bannick, who has written two books about woodpeckers, said the acorn woodpecker, a species common on the West Coast, often amasses thousands of the nuts for winter.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 7, 2023
Maybe if she amasses $4,000, her brother Marco will help her invest it in Honduras.
From "Enrique's Journey" by Sonia Nazario
Kristy Shen is a Canadian millennial who retired in her early 30s with a CAD $1 million portfolio that she amassed together with her husband by maintaining a high savings rate while renting.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 2, 2026
A prolific voice actor whose work spanned television shows, movies, video games and even theme park rides, Cullen amassed more than 200 credits over his career.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 27, 2026
Its previous leader had amassed more than $4 million in debt.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 27, 2026
She now watches Owens’s show, on every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and creates recap videos on her Instagram page, which has amassed nearly 100,000 followers and is regularly reposted by Owens herself.
From Salon ● Aug. 26, 2026
Although his mother had amassed quite a fortune—an especially impressive feat for a woman with no Talent—it hadn’t been enough to last him fifty-three years.
From "A Tangle of Knots" by Lisa Graff
On Sunday, Bloomberg reported that Mark Fischbach, a filmmaker and YouTube personality with nearly 40 million subscribers, had become the GoPro’s biggest shareholder after amassing an 8.5% stake in the company.
From MarketWatch ● Sep. 2, 2026
The troubles have opened a rift within the extended family that for more than 150 years has controlled Brown-Forman, amassing a collective wealth that Forbes puts at $11 billion.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 23, 2026
Some experts have warned that amassing too much space junk around Earth could lead to a dangerous chain reaction of collisions known as the "Kessler syndrome."
From Barron's ● Aug. 5, 2026
Australia dominated the medal table by amassing 171 followed by England with 110.
From BBC ● Aug. 3, 2026
Since 1990, when Dr. Strayer had begun digging into the issue of driving and attention/distraction, he’d studied the subject from numerous angles, amassing a host of papers on various nuances.
From "A Deadly Wandering: A Mystery, a Landmark Investigation, and the Astonishing Science of Attention in the Digital Age" by Matt Richtel
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
