increasingly

American  

[in-kree-sing-lee] / ɪnˈkri sɪŋ li /

adverb

1. to an ever greater degree; more and more: Marketers are increasingly using video to create meaningful emotional connections with their consumers.

   He became increasingly nervous and overwrought and began to suffer bouts of depression.

   Marketers are increasingly using video to create meaningful emotional connections with their consumers.

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Etymology

Origin of increasingly

increasing ( def. ) + -ly

Explanation

This adverb applies to anything that is happening more often, in greater numbers, or with greater intensity. An increasingly hot summer keeps getting hotter. To increase something is to add to it numerically, like increasing the size of your family by having a baby. Anything that happens increasingly is growing in some way. An increasingly depressed person keeps getting sadder. An increasingly sick patient keeps getting worse. An increasingly corrupt government is getting less and less honest. When you see this word, you know something is intensifying.

Example Sentences

China’s consumer spending declined last month for the first time in more than three years while investment contracted further, highlighting an increasingly lopsided economy.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 30, 2026

Efforts by local and international rescue teams to pull survivors from the rubble grew increasingly desperate in Venezuela four days after two powerful earthquakes shook the northern state of La Guaira.

From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 30, 2026

But his internal critics long privately grumbled, and more recently increasingly publicly grumbled that this amounted to him all too often not being able to articulate what he did believe.

From BBC • Jun. 29, 2026

His successors, it seems increasingly likely, may have to content themselves with less ambitious goals.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jun. 29, 2026

Gone are the big petroleum companies and the forests of derricks as the vast oil fields have been increasingly depleted.

From "Killers of the Flower Moon" by David Grann

Related Words

• more
• more and more
• progressively