increasingly
Americanadverb
Etymology
Origin of increasingly
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
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“The once habitual ‘big night out’ has become an increasingly fringe activity,” Imogen Willetts writes in “Up All Night,” her lively history of nightclubs through the ages.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 17, 2026
"I missed them, and they felt increasingly distant, like they belonged to another world."
From BBC ● Jul. 17, 2026
But with her cast growing increasingly more in demand every year, the author-turned-screenwriter says it would have been logistically difficult to make a fourth and final season.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 17, 2026
Defenders of signature matching say that computer analysis has become increasingly accurate and provides a practical and necessary check against fraud.
From Salon ● Jul. 17, 2026
In a series of increasingly poor choices, I threw away my only evidence.
From "South of Somewhere" by Kalena Miller
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.