Sample Sentences for
progressive
grouped by contextual meaning
(editor-reviewed)

progressive as in:  progressive decline

Show 3 more with this contextual meaning
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    She has a progressive paralysis.
    progressive = gradually becoming more severe
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    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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    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
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    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
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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)
    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.
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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)
    progressively = increasingly
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    Motor activity impaired; general reduction of glandular functioning; accelerated loss of coordination; and strong indications of progressive amnesia.  (source)
    progressive = gradually getting more severe
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    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)
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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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    For instance, he had the conventionally "progressive" ideas about the color bar, the superficial progressiveness of the idealist that seldom survives a conflict with self-interest.†  (source)
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    Mom became progressively angrier and then snapped.  (source)
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    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)
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progressive as in:  progressive ideas

Show 3 more with this contextual meaning
  • •
    She has a politically progressive reputation.
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    "Coeducation," the headmaster said, "is a part of the future of any progressive school."  (source)
    progressive = advancing new idea
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    I had studied Sweden's progressive approach to the rehabilitation of criminal offenders as a graduate student and had long marveled at how focused on recovery their system appeared.  (source)
    progressive = new
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Show 10 more with 4 word variations
  • •
    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
  • •
    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)
    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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    And in the general hardening of outlook that set in round about 1930, practices which had been long abandoned ... were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive.  (source)
    progressive = favoring political change or new ideas (typically associated with liberal causes)
  • •
    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)
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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)
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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
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    Even if he had been certain that all the progressives were fools like him, it would not have allayed his uneasiness.†  (source)
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    She found a tiny apartment near Decatur, a picturesque and progressive suburb east of Atlanta anchored by an old granite courthouse with grand Corinthian columns.  (source)
    progressive = favoring new ideas
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meaning too rare to warrant focus

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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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    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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•
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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