Definition of "congeries"

And when the Newtonian philosophy gained ground in Europe, it was the opinion of Cotes rather than that of Newton that became most prevalent, till at last Boscovich propounded his theory, that matter is a congeries of mathematical points...

1876, James Clerk Maxwell, “On Action at a Distance”, in Proceedings of the Royal Institution of Great Britain

The world has seen the postal system developed from a congeries of independent and exclusive services into a well-ordered union, of which all countries enjoy the manifold benefits.

1898, William McKinley, Second State of the Union Address

I have always taken a lively interest in this singular oasis of comparative civilization and organized society, set in the midst of a congeries of barbarous peoples, over whom its rulers exercise an authority which, if scarcely approaching the settled polity of more advanced communities, is at least in the direction of peace and order.

1908, Sir Charles James Lyall, “Introduction”, in T. C. Hodson, The Meitheis, London: David Nutt, page xvii

By short cuts known to him, he made his way now through the vast congeries of rooms and staircases to the banqueting-hall, five acres distant on the other side of the house.

1928, Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography, London: The Hogarth Press; republished as Orlando: A Biography (eBook no. 0200331h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, July 2015

Two of the less irrelevantly moving things - a rather large congeries of iridescent, prolately spheroidal bubbles and a very much smaller polyhedron of unknown colours and rapidly shifting surface angles - seemed to take notice of him and follow him about or float ahead as he changed position...

1932, H. P. Lovecraft, Dreams in the Witch-House

When Washtucna Coulee could not contain the great surge, floodwaters rose to make one of the most significant records on the entire plateau. In two places, they topped the divide between the nearly parallel preglacial Palouse and Snake valleys, crossing it to enter the Snake Canyon. They swept away a loessial cover more than 100 feet thick from 80 square miles of summit area and scored the basalt thus exposed into a congeries of canyons, cataracts, and rock basin.

1969 September, J. Harlen Bretz, “The Lake Missoula Floods and the Channeled Scabland”, in The Journal of Geology‎, volume 77, number 5, University of Chicago Press, Flood Crossings of the Palouse Snake Divide, page 526

The three of them could hardly tell themselves apart, became a sort of congeries of loving emotions, all mutually complementary.

1974, Lawrence Durrell, Monsieur, Faber & Faber, published 1992, page 40

That whole congeries of values was now in question.

2003, Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason, Penguin, published 2004, page 243

It was not what I was that I disliked, I mean the singular, essential me - although I grant that even the notion of an essential, singular self is problematic - but the congeries of affects, inclinations, received ideas, class tics, that my birth and upbringing had bestowed on me in place of a personality.

2005, John Banville, The Sea, Picador, page 216

Where once it [the British royal family] was an organising hub of national accumulation and a centre of political power, now—as well, of course, as a congeries of extraordinarily wealthy rentiers—it's a farcical and profitable commodity for the culture industry, and an invaluable component of authoritarian national mythology.

2022, China Miéville, chapter 6, in A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto