Definition of "hypertrophy" []

• A nontumorous enlargement of an organ or a tissue as a result of an increase in the size rather than the number of constituent cells: muscle hypertrophy. (noun)
• To grow or cause to grow abnormally large. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "The term hypertrophy may serve as a general one to comprise all the instances of excessive growth and increased size of organs, whether the increase be general or in one direction merely."
• "The process that allows the python's heart to expand is called hypertrophy."
• "We have what the anthropologist Pascal Boyer has called a hypertrophy of social cognition."