gather

verb gathers · gathering · gathered · gether

1. To collect normally separate things. I've been gathering ideas from the people I work with.
2. Especially, to harvest food. We went to gather some blackberries from the nearby lane.
3. To accumulate over time, to amass little by little. Over the years he'd gathered a considerable collection of mugs.
4. intransitive To congregate, or assemble. People gathered round as he began to tell his story.
5. intransitive To grow gradually larger by accretion. Their snow-ball did not gather as it went.
6. To bring parts of a whole closer. She gathered the shawl about her as she stepped into the cold.
7. 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.
8. To bring stitches closer together. Be careful not to stretch or gather your knitting.
9. 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.
10. To haul in; to take up. to gather the slack of a rope
11. To infer or conclude; to know from a different source. From his silence, I gathered that things had not gone well.
12. intransitive To be filled with pus Salt water can help boils to gather and then burst.
13. To collect molten glass on the end of a tool.
14. To gain; to win. He gathers ground upon her in the chase.

Similar: add up, begather, togetherize

noun gathers · gether

1. A plait or fold in cloth, made by drawing a thread through it; a pucker.
2. The inclination forward of the axle journals to keep the wheels from working outward.
3. The soffit or under surface of the masonry required in gathering. See gather.
4. A blob of molten glass collected on the end of a blowpipe.
5. A gathering. "I'll tell you all about it at the Gather, win or lose."