Repeatedly adding new terms to the existing search pattern

I want to add more terms to the existing search pattern. *
picks up the word at the cursor and searches on it. I want
to pick up the word, add its pattern to the existing
pattern, and so search on both. Then I want to repeat the
operation to search on all three words, etc.

I've ended up with a complicated mapping which uses * to get
the word so it becomes the last item in the search history; adds
the last item to the one before it and assigns this value to
the search register; finally adds the search register contents
back into the history:

nnoremap £ *:let @/=histget("/",-2) . '\\|' . histget("/",-1)<CR>:call histadd("/",@/)<CR>

This works fine but I'm just wondering if I'm missing
something much simpler? Can anyone comment?

It's just out of interest since this solution works (so far :)

regards,
Geoff

More details about how I got to this point...

I started out thinking the search register and the last item
in the history were the same thing, but they're not. Here's
some other simpler likely mappings I tried:

This works to combine last two items in the search register
and does a search, but doesn't change history, so the
changes don't build up.
nnoremap £ *:let @/=histget("/",-2) . '\\|' . histget("/",-1)<CR>

This may be as expected, I'm not sure. It's discussed in
':help history' but it's a bit obscure to me:

"All searches are put in the search history, including the
ones that come from commands like "*" and "#". But for a
mapping, only the last search is remembered (to avoid that
long mappings trash the history)".

------
This combines last two items in history so the last item in
the history is as I expect, but the search register doesn't
change:
nnoremap £ *:call histadd("/", histget("/",-2) . '\\|' . histget("/",-1))<CR>

------
This does an actual search on what I want, but doesn't put
the expression in history or the search register:
nnoremap £ *:call search(histget("/",-2) . '\\|' . histget("/",-1))<CR>

------
Background: For analysing log files I want to consider
individual errors then hide all the lines matching them. I
use the searchfold.vim plugin which allows me to quickly
fold away lines that match the search expression, and it
works great in itself. I press * to highlight a term, then
\iz to fold matching lines away.

When I see another error, I have to manually get its pattern
and add it to the search register. I do this by pressing *
on it, then type /, 'up' twice the previous pattern, '\|'
then 'Ctrl-R/' to append the new search to the previous
one.

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