Incremental

How to spell incremental

11 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce incremental

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does incremental mean?

1. adjectiveHappening or increasing in small successive stages rather than all at once.

Incremental in a sentence

• The team made incremental improvements to the software each week.

• The contract allows for incremental price rises tied to inflation.

Where does incremental come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin incrementum, which meant 'growth' or 'increase'. That noun was built on the verb crescere, meaning literally 'to grow', the same root that gives us 'crescent', 'crescendo', and 'increase'. The 'in-' here acts as an intensifier rather than a negative, so the sense is growth that adds on bit by bit. English took up 'increment' as a noun in the fifteenth century for an amount of growth or addition, and the adjective 'incremental' followed later, describing anything that proceeds in small successive stages. The spelling trap sits in the unstressed middle: the schwa sound after 'incre-' is written with an 'e' (from incrementum), not an 'a', and the single 'm' and 't' are easy to second-guess.

How the word is built

• in- (in, onto)
• crement (from Latin incrementum: growth, increase, on crescere 'to grow')
• -al (adjective suffix)