cumulative

adjective cu·mu·la·tive \ˈkyü-myə-lə-tiv, -ˌlā-\

: increasing or becoming better or worse over time through a series of additions

: including or adding together all of the things that came before

Full Definition of CUMULATIVE

a : made up of accumulated parts

b : increasing by successive additions

: tending to prove the same point <cumulative evidence>

a : taking effect upon completion of another penal sentence <a cumulative sentence>

b : increasing in severity with repetition of the offense <cumulative penalty>

: formed by the addition of new material of the same kind <a cumulative book index>

: summing or integrating overall data or values of a random variable less than or less than or equal to a specified value <cumulative normal distribution> <cumulative frequency distribution>

— cu·mu·la·tive·ly adverb

— cu·mu·la·tive·ness noun

See cumulative defined for English-language learners

See cumulative defined for kids

Examples of CUMULATIVE

… Game Boy, which first came out in 1989 as a monochrome handheld toy, has become the most successful of all of the systems, reaching cumulative sales of 110 million units to date … —N'gai Croal, Newsweek, 28 May 2001
They began looking at the cumulative effect of stress and realized that, while there might have been an incident that finally triggered the madness, a series of previous events had lowered the soldier's emotional resistance. —Michael Fleming and Roger Manvell, Psychology Today, July 1987
Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. —Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance,” in Essays, 1841
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