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.

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incremental British  

/ ˌɪnkrɪˈmɛntəl /

adjective

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

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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

See Examples For:

incremental

He played in his first summer league games, showing incremental progress during games in San Francisco and Las Vegas.

From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 7, 2026

Their checks also indicated that Toshiba doesn’t seem to be targeting market share gains through pricing, and that neither Western Digital nor Seagate intend to respond with incremental capacity expansions of their own.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 6, 2026

He added that ON identified incremental opportunities for revenue synergies and insourcing, beyond the initial expectation for $200 million in annual run-rate synergies.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 1, 2026

Together, Bernstein estimates these three customers represent an incremental revenue pipeline of roughly $25 billion for Celestica.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 30, 2026

At first he used electronic techniques to make incremental transformations to a pattern, later having live players and acoustic instruments imitate this effect under his very specific and detailed configuration.

From "The Story of Music" by Howard Goodall