lexicow

gather

/ˈɡæðər//ˈɡæðə/·verb
The whole yard is strewn with fallen leaves — red and gold and brown, lying just where they dropped. Someone starts at the far end and walks the length of it behind a rake, and the leaves it meets are pushed along into a heap that rides in front of the tines and swells the whole way across. Nothing is picked out and nothing sorted by colour — whatever the rake reaches simply comes along. I watch the bare ground open up behind and the heap grow ahead, until what lay flung across the entire yard is one loose pile at the far side.
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Definition

To gather is to bring scattered things together into one place — leaves into a heap, papers off a desk, a crowd into a square. It is the plainest, most general member of its family: where you collect by careful selection and things accumulate almost on their own, you simply gather whatever is spread out and draw it in. From the Old English gaderian, 'to bring together', it serves the concrete (gather wood) and the abstract alike (gather evidence, gather your thoughts).

Examples

  • As dusk fell, the guide gathered the scattered hikers before anyone could disperse into the woods.
  • She gathered the loose pages from the floor and tried to discern which draft was the latest.
  • The children gathered driftwood along the shore to build up a bonfire for the evening.

Collocations

gather information·gather evidence·gather a crowd·gather momentum·gather speed

Synonyms

collect·assemble·accumulate·amass·round up

Antonyms

scatter·disperse·distribute

Word family

gathering (noun)

In TOEFL & IELTS

The versatile everyday verb for bringing things together — 'gather data/evidence/information' is common across TOEFL and IELTS, and the idioms 'gather momentum/speed' and 'gather your thoughts' are useful in speaking. Hold the nuance against its near-synonyms: gather is the broad bring-together, collect adds deliberate selection, and accumulate is passive build-up over time.