Definition of "mass"

[…] he hath discovered to me the way to five or six of the richest mines which the Spaniard hath, and whence all the mass of gold that comes into Spain in effect is drawn.

1829, Sir Walter Raleigh, The Works of Sir Walter Ralegh, Kt, volume VIII

For though he had spent a huge mass of treasure in transporting his army, […] .

1869, Alexander George Richey, Lectures on the History of Ireland: Down to A. D. 1534, page 204

They would unavoidably mix up the whole of these declarations, and mass them together, although the Judge might direct the Jury not to do so.

1829, William Burke, John Macnee, Trial of William Burke and Helen M'Dougal: Before the High Court of Judiciary, William Hare

Every bend on the hill had acted like a funnel to mass them together in this peculiar way.

1857, Edward Henry Nolan, The Illustrated History of the War against Russia, Parts 93-111, page 432

Where there is too great a repetition of forms, light and shade will break them up or mass them together.

1869, H. P. Robinson, Pictorial Effect in Photography: Being Hints on Composition and Chiariscuro for Photographers

The national liberation movement had not yet developed to a sufficiently mass scale.

1988, V. V. Zagladin, Vitaly Baskakov, International Working Class and Communist Movement: Historical Record, 1830s to Mid-1940s‎, page 236

With perhaps unprecedented magnitude and clarity, Auschwitz brings theologians and philosophers face to face with the facts of suffering on an incredibly mass scale, with issues poignantly raised concerning the absence of divine intervention or the inadequacies of divine power or benevolence; […] .

1989, Creighton Peden, Larry E. Axel (editors), God, Values, and Empiricism: Issues in Philosophical Theology‎, page 2

The air arms did more than provide the warring nations with individual heroes, for their individual exploits occurred within the context of an increasingly mass aerial effort in a war of the masses.

2010, John Horne, A Companion to World War I‎, page 159

Every agency is sold on use of mass media today — or at least, it thinks it is — and what can be "masser" than television?

1958, Child Welfare, volume 37, page 2

While agreeing with Bell on the unlikelihood that any fully mass — in the sense of atomized and alienated — society has ever existed,5 I believe that at any point in time, in any social system, some elements may be characterized as "masses."

1970, James Wilson White, The Sōkagakkai and Mass Society‎, page 3

Undoubtedly this is the case; at least it is "masser" than in Pinchot's time.

1974, Edward Abraham Cohn, The Political Economy of Environmental Enhancement, page 91

But it also highlights the changes that have taken place in gay and AIDS activism, and the way that a formerly mass movement has been recast.

1999 December, Sara Miles, “Rebel with a Cause”, in Out‎, page 132

The director didn't make the images up; they're there, but in putting that one slice of gay life into the massest of mass media — the amoral promiscuity, the drug and alcohol abuse, the stereotyped flamboyance and campiness, the bitchy queeniness and flimsy values — something very dangerous happens […]

2000 November 21, Howie Klein, “Queer as role models”, in The Advocate, number 825, page 9

[…] if only because it promises the ‘massest’ of mass markets.

2001, Brian Moeran, Asian Media Productions, page 13

Finally, in the past century, secular culture itself has undergone a transition from predominantly folk styles to an overwhelmingly mass culture, […] .

2004, John R. Hall, Gone from the Promised Land: Jonestown in American Cultural History‎, page 79

As a right, we come to expect it, and that happens through the mass media, the massest of which, by far, is television.

2007, Thomas Peele, Queer popular culture: literature, media, film, and television, page 11

massing priests

1594–1597, Richard Hooker, edited by J[ohn] S[penser], Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, […], London: […] Will[iam] Stansby [for Matthew Lownes], published 1611, (please specify the page)