PROGRESSIVE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Progressive

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/prəgrˈɛsɪv/ Listen

adjective

Progressive adj.

1.

Moving forward; proceeding onward; advancing; evincing progress; increasing; as, progressive motion or course; opposed to retrograde.

2.

Improving; as, art is in a progressive state.

3.

(U. S. History) Of or pertaining to the Progressive party.

4.

Favoring improvement, change, progress, or reform, especially in a political context; used of people. Contrasted with conservative. Note: The term progressive is sometimes used to describe the views of a politician, where liberal might have been used at one time, in communities where the term liberal has come to connote extreme views.

5.

Disposed toward adopting new methods in government or education, holding tolerant and liberal ideas, and generally favoring improvement in civic life; of towns and communities.

Progressive euchre or Progressive whist, a way of playing at card parties, by which after every game, the losers at the first table go to the last table, and the winners at all the tables, except the first, move up to the next table.

Progressive muscular atrophy (Med.), a nervous disorder characterized by continuous atrophy of the muscles.

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Etymology of 'Progressive'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Progressive" Quotes from Famous Books

... true," he confessed, "I have been called to pass through some strange experiences. But all were necessary steps; and I have now reached a stand-point from which I can look back and see in its indisputable place every grade of the progressive ascent. There has been only apparent failure. Our attempted Association was a necessary foreshadowing of what remains to be unfolded; a prophetic symbol. We have all been ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... many that there can be anything better than butter for cooking, or of greater utility than lard, and the advent of Crisco has been a shock to the older generation, born in an age less progressive than our own, and prone to contend that the old fashioned things ...

— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil

... Percy Ambler, man of fashion and dilettante poet; and with him little Murray Symington, who wrote the literary chat for "Knickerbocker's Weekly", and was therefore a power to be propitiated. There came Blanchard, the young and progressive publisher of the "Beau Monde", a weekly whose circulation rivalled that of "Macintyre's". There came also young Macklin, Mrs. Patton's nephew, with his monocle and his killing drawl. Macklin came by these honestly, having been brought up in England; but Thyrsis ...

— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... ago I expressed to Wordsworth a wish that his poems were printed in the order of their composition, assigning as reasons for the wish the great interest which would attach to observing the progressive development of the poet's thought, and the interpretative value of the light mutually reflected by poems of the same period. I remember being surprised by the feeling akin to indignation which he manifested at the suggestion. ...

— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... active and progressive as the nineteenth century has been, in politics, science and literature, it would have been surprising if the church had remained inert, wrapped like a mummy in the cerements of the past. At the beginning of the century, ...

— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

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