incremental

American  

[in-kruh-men-tl, ing-] / ˌɪn krəˈmɛn tl, ˌɪŋ- /

adjective

1. increasing or adding on, especially in a regular series.

   small, incremental tax hikes.

---

incremental British  

/ ˌɪnkrɪˈmɛntəl /

adjective

1. of, relating to, using, or rising by increments

---

Other Word Forms

• incrementally
  adverb

Etymology

Origin of incremental

First recorded in 1675–85; increment + -al ¹

Explanation

If you are making incremental progress in math, you are moving slowly but steadily forward. Incremental describes regular, measurable movements that are usually small. Sometimes a basketball team might make a huge improvement, like a team that is 32-50 one year and then 50-32 the next. More often, progress is small and tiny — incremental. Anytime something is changing in any way, and the change is slow and steady, you can talk about incremental changes. A lot of life is like that. You might prefer to be making great or even miraculous progress, but incremental gains are better than none at all.

Example Sentences

Reiterating an accumulate rating on the stock, Filius tells clients in a note that Netwealth’s incremental investment into fiscal 2027 looks like a doubling down on its strategy to drive further long-term scale benefits.

From The Wall Street Journal • Jul. 9, 2026

However, Jones flagged that “the potential cloud offering and fees for access to its AI model all serve to provide incremental revenue beyond its core advertising revenue.”

From MarketWatch • Jul. 9, 2026

Meta struck a $14.2 billion deal with CoreWeave last September, and the two parties expanded the agreement by an incremental $21 billion in April.

From MarketWatch • Jul. 1, 2026

Taken together, they formed the government’s central theory of the case: Whatever happened here was too limited, too incremental, too voluntary to qualify as a Fourth Amendment search.

From Slate • Jun. 29, 2026

All of the possible reasons for why New York’s crime rate dropped are changes that happened at the margin; they were incremental changes.

From "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell