English

Adverb

more and more

1. (degree) Progressively more.

   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.

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.

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 (eg, "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.

Coordinate terms

• fewer and fewer

Translations