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progressive
in a sentence
grouped by contextual meaning

progressive as in:  progressive decline

Show 3 more with this contextual meaning
  • •
    She has a progressive paralysis.
    progressive = gradually becoming more severe
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    I swear the Gamemakers are progressively ratcheting up the temperature in the daytime and sending it plummeting at night.  (source)
    progressively = increasingly
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    But his diary and two notes found at the camp tell a wrenching story of his desperate and progressively futile efforts to survive.  (source)
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Show 10 more with 3 word variations
  • •
    Mom became progressively angrier and then snapped.  (source)
    progressively = increasingly
  • •
    By "out there," he didn't mean Kabul, which had always been relatively liberal and progressive.  (source)
    progressive = favoring liberal political change or ideas
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    Tony felt at the time that he would be surprised; he felt it would be rather like having a relation with an animal, in spite of his "progressiveness."†  (source)
    progressiveness = the quality of gradually advancing or becoming more severe
    standard suffix: The suffix "-ness" converts an adjective to a noun that means the quality of. This is the same pattern you see in words like darkness, kindness, and coolness.
  • •
    A few minutes later, someone noticed that the engines on one side were burning more fuel than those on the other, making one side progressively lighter.  (source)
    progressively = increasingly
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    Generally considered to encompass ages twelve to eighteen, adolescence is defined by radical transformation, including the obvious and often distressing physical changes associated with puberty (increases in height and weight and sex-related changes) as well as progressive gains in the capacity for reasoned and mature judgment, impulse control, and autonomy.  (source)
    progressive = increasing
  • •
    In the very olden time there lived a semi-barbaric king, whose ideas, though somewhat polished and sharpened by the progressiveness of distant Latin neighbors, were still large, florid, and untrammeled, as became the half of him which was barbaric.†  (source)
    progressiveness = the quality of gradually advancing or becoming more severe
  • •
    Aunty said ... that I was born good but had grown progressively worse every year.  (source)
    progressively = increasingly
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    Now she caught the low undertone, as of the wind sinking down to repose itself; then ascended with it, as it rose through progressive gradations of sweetness and power, until its volume seemed to envelop her with an atmosphere of awe and solemn grandeur.  (source)
    progressive = gradually getting more intense
  • •
    He had been in the country long enough to be shocked; at the same time his "progressiveness" was deliciously flattered by this evidence of white ruling-class hypocrisy.†  (source)
    progressiveness = the quality of gradually advancing or becoming more severe
  • •
    Harry had to admit that the poster was not quite as funny after an hour or two, especially when the talking spell had started to wear off, so that it merely shouted disconnected words like 'DUNG' and 'UMBRIDGE' at more and more frequent intervals in a progressively higher voice.  (source)
    progressively = increasingly
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progressive as in:  progressive ideas

Show 3 more with this contextual meaning
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    She has a politically progressive reputation.
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    My father, always the progressive man, decided that every one of his children and his nieces and nephews would learn to swim.  (source)
    progressive = open to new ideas to make things better
  • •
    In a stroke, the conservative hawk had cast himself as a man of the future and his progressive opponent as a reactionary.  (source)
    progressive = person favoring new idea intended to make things better
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Show 10 more with 4 word variations
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    "Coeducation," the headmaster said, "is a part of the future of any progressive school."  (source)
    progressive = advancing new idea
  • •
    Liberal progressives like him did not enjoy the singing and chanting.  (source)
    progressives = people who favor liberal political change or ideas
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    I felt no condemnation; yet the memory, static, unprogressive, haunted me.†  (source)
    unprogressive = not favoring liberal political change or ideas
    standard prefix: The prefix "un-" in unprogressive means not and reverses the meaning of progressive. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
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    And everyone in Afghanistan would be happy too, she said, once the antiprogressives, the backward bandits, were defeated.  (source)
    antiprogressives = opposing people who favor liberal political change or ideas
    standard prefix: The prefix "anti-" in antiprogressives means against or opposite. This is the same pattern you see in words like antiviral, antiaircraft, and antisocial.
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    In 2013, along with Marsha Colbey, we decided to honor the charismatic former director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Elaine Jones, and the progressive ice-cream icons Ben (Cohen) and Jerry (Greenfield).  (source)
    progressive = favoring liberal political change or ideas
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    Still, he pushes forward gamely-there's a lot of ground to cover in this survey course-and by 8:55 he's tying social characteristics of lateeighteenth-century American progressives to the emergence of public educational institutions, schools that carried, he asserts, "an evangelical fervor in what they saw as the serious business of educating youngsters, especially the hordes of immigrants."†  (source)
    progressives = people who favor liberal political change or ideas
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    Any rich, unprogressive old party with that particularly grasping, acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius can own a paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands of tired, hurried men, men too involved in the business of modern living to swallow anything but predigested food.†  (source)
    unprogressive = not favoring liberal political change or ideas
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    Progressive admirers, though, hailed Pei's seventy-one-foot-tall transparent pyramid as a dazzling synergy of ancient structure and modern method—a symbolic link between the old and new—helping usher the Louvre into the next millennium.  (source)
    Progressive = favoring new idea
  • •
    Unwilling to commit himself to the Democratic party he had always opposed, and whose platform he believed to be equally weak, Norris toured the country campaigning for fellow progressives regardless of party.†  (source)
    progressives = people who favor liberal political change or ideas
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    Hull House had become a bastion of progressive thought inhabited by strong-willed young women, "interspersed," as one visitor put it, "with earnest-faced, self-subordinating and mild-mannered men who slide from room to room apologetically."  (source)
    progressive = favoring liberal political change
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rare meaning

Show 3 with this contextual meaning
  • •
    Osip Ivanovich had actually mastered the English language right down to the past perfect progressive as early as 1939.  (source)
    progressive = a language tense showing that an action that started in the past continued up until another time in the past; e.g., I played on the team for a year before I quit.
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    After an unexplained absence of several days, the body of industrialist Richard E. Griffen, forty-seven, said to have been favoured for the Progressive Conservative candidacy in the Toronto riding of St. David's, was discovered near his summer residence of "Avilion" in Port Ticonderoga, where he was vacationing.  (source)
    Progressive = fictitious political party
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    I had no idea what the Progressive Era was, and back in the office, I got out the World Book Encyclopedia.  (source)
    Progressive = period of U.S. history (1890s-1920s) where government expanded its role in American life
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One day I interviewed a community activist who described a particular job program as a throwback to the Progressive Era.  (source)
Progressive = period of U.S. history (1890s-1920s) where government expanded its role in American life
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