Origin: Latin suffix -ive
Cumulative has 2 different meanings across 1 category:
increasing by successive addition
"the benefits are cumulative"
"the eventual accumulative effect of these substances"
Incorporating all current and previous data up to the present or at the time of measuring or collating.
"The cumulative rainfall total recorded over the last month reflects every drop that has fallen since the beginning of the season."
In plain English: Cumulative means growing bigger by adding up many small things over time to make something much larger than it started as.
"The cumulative effect of small daily savings adds up to a large fortune over time."
Usage: Use cumulative when describing totals that grow by adding each new item to those already counted, such as a cumulative score in a game. This word is often confused with "collective," which refers to things grouped together rather than added sequentially over time.
The word comes from the Latin cumulare, meaning to heap up or pile together, combined with the suffix -ive. It entered English through the influence of related terms in Romance languages like French and Italian.