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

The paper arrives at a time when debates about conscious artificial intelligence are becoming increasingly common.

From Science Daily • Jun. 24, 2026

The largest supplier of autonomous capacity in America is increasingly going direct through its own app.

From MarketWatch • Jun. 24, 2026

Attention is therefore increasingly focused on what Burnham in No 10 would look like.

From BBC • Jun. 24, 2026

“The adverse development coincides with notable customers recently complaining that the technologies have become unreasonably expensive, raising slowdown anxiety tied to the potential for firms to increasingly limit capital expenditures,” Torres noted.

From Barron's • Jun. 23, 2026

In English, apart from a couple of occurrences in a text of 1589, ‘scientific’ does not appear until 1637, after which date it becomes increasingly common.

From "The Invention of Science" by David Wootton

Related Words

• more
• more and more
• progressively