gather

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• intransitive verb To collect from different places; assemble.
• intransitive verb To cause to come together; convene.
• intransitive verb To draw (something or someone) closer to oneself.
• intransitive verb To draw into small folds or puckers, as by pulling a thread through cloth.
• intransitive verb To contract and wrinkle (the brow).
• intransitive verb To harvest or pick.
• intransitive verb To conclude or infer, as from evidence.
• intransitive verb To summon up; muster.
• intransitive verb To accumulate (something) gradually; amass.
• intransitive verb To attract or be the center of attraction for.
• intransitive verb To gain by a process of gradual increase.
• intransitive verb To pick up or collect (molten glass) using a tool in glass blowing.
• intransitive verb To come together in a group; assemble.
• intransitive verb To accumulate.
• intransitive verb To grow or increase by degrees.
• intransitive verb To come to a head, as a boil; fester.
• intransitive verb To forage for wild foodstuffs.
• noun The act or an instance of gathering.
• noun Something gathered, especially.
• noun A small fold or pucker made by gathering cloth.
• noun A mass of molten glass collected on the end of a blowpipe or other glass-blowing tool.

from The Century Dictionary.

• In mech., to fit into; fit together: used in speaking of the teeth of gears.
• Nautical, to overtake another vessel: a vessel is said to gather on another when it is overtaking it.
• noun A plait or fold in cloth held in position by a thread drawn through it.
• noun A slight forward inclination of the axle-spindle of a carriage, to insure the even running of the wheel.
• To bring or draw together; assemble; congregate; collect; make a collection or aggregation of.
• To take by selection from among other things; sort out or separate, as what is desired or valuable; cull; pick; pluck.
• To bring closer together the component parts of; draw into smaller compass, as a garment; hence, to make folds in, as the brow by contracting it.
• Hence In sewing, to full or shirr (a piece of cloth) by running a thread through it and then drawing it in small puckers by means of the thread.
• In building, to contract or close in, as a drain or chimney.
• To acquire or gain, with or without effort; accumulate; win.
• To accumulate by saving and bringing together; amass.
• To collect or learn by observation or reasoning; infer; conclude.
• To bring into order; arrange; settle.
• In glass manufacturing, to collect from the pot (a mass of molten glass) on the end of an iron tube, preparatory to blowing. This operation is performed by a workman called a gatherer. See gatherer, 6.
• To reap, cull, crop.
• To hoard, heap up.
• To collect; congregate; come together: as, the clouds gather in the west.
• To increase; grow larger by accretion.
• To come to a head, as a sore in suppurating.
• Synonyms To come together, muster, cluster.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• transitive verb To bring together; to collect, as a number of separate things, into one place, or into one aggregate body; to assemble; to muster; to congregate.
• transitive verb To pick out and bring together from among what is of less value; to collect, as a harvest; to harvest; to cull; to pick off; to pluck.
• transitive verb To accumulate by collecting and saving little by little; to amass; to gain; to heap up.
• transitive verb To bring closely together the parts or particles of; to contract; to compress; to bring together in folds or plaits, as a garment; also, to draw together, as a piece of cloth by a thread; to pucker; to plait.
• transitive verb To derive, or deduce, as an inference; to collect, as a conclusion, from circumstances that suggest, or arguments that prove; to infer; to conclude.
• transitive verb obsolete To gain; to win.
• transitive verb (Arch.) To bring together, or nearer together, in masonry, as where the width of a fireplace is rapidly diminished to the width of the flue, or the like.