Definition of "subsume" [sub•sume]

• To classify, include, or incorporate in a more comprehensive category or under a general principle: "The evolutionarily later always subsumes and includes the evolutionarily earlier” ( Frederick Turner). (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.

• ""subsume" the least of individual things except in so far as the material element which is its body would surround all living things and bring them into contact with one another."
• "And finally, "A few collections of essays on novelists or various aspects of fiction have been especially valuable because of the attitudes torwards fiction that subsume them:""
• "The older I get, the less I want to subsume my entire life's work and hopes into some poor small person who would have done nothing to deserve the resentment I would surely feel."