Gimme, Gimme, Gimme : Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus

The word stockpile has a militaristic undertone to it which lends a certain gravitas to the practice, never mind if what is being stockpiled is an assortment of every spork ever made or the full run of Alf stickers in their original packaging.

A number of things are kept there: stockpiles of metal used by the convicts to manufacture automobile license plates, lumber, old machinery, baseball paraphernalia—and also an unpainted wooden gallows that smells faintly of pine.

cache

Cache comes from French Canadian trapper’s slang for “hiding place.” The term later came to refer to the hidden items as well as the actual hiding place itself.

Underneath the sawdust—and he knew exactly where—were caches of nutshells, seeds, bones, fruit, and gristle.

garner

Garner is a word that is usually used in the sense of picking up or gathering, as in the phrase "to garner praise." It originated in the late 15th century, meaning "to store grain."

The fanfare surrounding their unorthodox proposal garnered more than likes and retweets, however, as businesses and generous South Africans offered to help pay for the couple’s wedding, honeymoon and gifts. Fox News

accrue

Accrue is another word with a similar passive sense like garner. Accrue means to "gain by increment" and emphasizes the slow growth of carefully maintained and curated collections. The value of an object may accrue without the collector doing anything at all, other than keeping it over a period of time.

The more time we spent at church, she reckoned, the more blessings we accrued, like a Starbucks Rewards Card.

amass

During my first twenty or so years in prison, I accumulated very few possessions, but in the last few years I had amassed enough property — mainly books and papers — to make up for previous decades.

accumulate

Accumulate, a word from the early 16th century, literally means “to heap up, amass” from Latin cumulus, “heap.” This is the same root that gives cumulus clouds their name, because the clouds resemble a big pile of fluffiness.

The idea of what it means to be poor changed in the late sixties, when American manufacturers began to import their products from overseas and we began to accumulate “things.”

hoard

A hoard originally referred to "a treasure, a valuable stock or store." To hoard items is to zealously collect and vigilantly hold onto them. Hoard is often used to connote a somewhat obsessive degree of collecting.

It was one of the most valuable magic items in my inventory, looted from the hoard of a red dragon I’d slain on Gygax.

aggregate

Most grocery retailers buy from third party distribution companies, which aggregate inventory from thousands of manufacturers and run high volume facilities on very slim margins. Salon

collect

Ifemelu imagined them when they traveled: they would collect unusual things and fill their homes with them, unpolished evidence of their polish.

acquisition

Perhaps the word that best sums up all this behavior is acquisition. Dating from the 14th century, this word contains an element derived from the Latin quaerere, which means “seek to obtain.” Hoarders and collectors both seek to obtain many, many things.

The Ptolemys devoted much of their enormous wealth to the acquisition of every Greek book, as well as works from Africa, Persia, India, Israel and other parts of the world.

squirrel away

“Even squirrels, who ‘ squirrel away’ acorns for the winter, may prefer young tree bark for a change of pace,” he said. Washington Times

possession

I’m supposed to have accumulated things by now: possessions, responsibilities, achievements, experience and wisdom.

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