more and more

English

Adverb

more and more

1. (degree) Progressively more.

   The road gets more and more steep.

   Oil is getting more and more expensive.

   He started calling more and more frequently.

   • 1923, Leo Tolstoy, Louise and Aylmer Maude (translators), War and Peace,

     What was expressed by the whole of the count's plump figure, in Marya Dmitrievna found expression only in her more and more beaming face and quivering nose.

   • 1959 February, G. Freeman Allen, “Southampton—Gateway to the Ocean”, in Trains Illustrated, page 91:

     The Southern acquired them because the little Class "B4" 0-4-0 tanks were finding heavy modern rolling stock more and more of a handful, and at war's end the railway had nothing of suitable power but short wheelbase on its books to take their place on the more tortuous of the dock lines.

2. (manner) In a manner that progressively increases.

   The wound hurt more and more as we walked on.

   • 1782, Robert Burns, John Barleycorn:

     His colour sicken'd more and more,
     He faded into age;
     And then his enemies began
     To show their deadly rage.

   • 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, , →OCLC, Canto XXI, page 35:

     A third is wroth: ‘Is this an hour
     ⁠For private sorrow’s barren song,
     ⁠When more and more the people throng
     The chairs and thrones of civil power?’

3. (modal) Indicates that the statement is becoming progressively more true.

   More and more, children are among the first to take up new technologies.

   • 1864 September, “The Cadmean Madness”, in The Atlantic Monthly, volume 14:

     More and more it is not the soul and Nature, but the eye and print, whose resultant is thought.

Usage notes

• The degree adverb sense is often an ellipsis of an instance of the more general phenomenon of reduplication of the comparative form of adjectives or adverbs (e.g. "hotter and hotter").

Coordinate terms

• less and less
• further and further
• farther and farther

Translations

Determiner

more and more

1. Increasingly more; a growing number of; a growing quantity of.

   There are more and more people who keep pets these days.

   • 2023 January 11, Philip Haigh, “Comment: The worst chaos for 40 years”, in RAIL, number 974, page 4:

     It's unarguable that ticket offices are less relevant than they once were. More and more passengers buy tickets online.

Coordinate terms

• fewer and fewer

Translations