Progressive

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Progressive \Pro*gress"ive\, a. [Cf. F. progressif.]
     [1913 Webster]
     1. Moving forward; proceeding onward; advancing; evincing
        progress; increasing; as, progressive motion or course; --
        opposed to {retrograde}.
        [1913 Webster]


  
     2. Improving; as, art is in a progressive state.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     3. (U. S. History) Of or pertaining to the Progressive party.
        [Webster 1913 Suppl.]
  
     4. Favoring improvement, change, progress, or reform,
        especially in a political context; -- used of people.
        Contrasted with {conservative}.
        [PJC]
  
     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.
           [PJC]
  
     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.
        [PJC]
  
     {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.
        [1913 Webster] -- {Pro*gress"ive*ly}, adv. --
        {Pro*gress"ive*ness}, n.
        [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  progressive
       adj 1: favoring or promoting progress; "progressive schools" [ant:
              {regressive}]
       2: favoring or promoting reform (often by government action)
          [syn: {reformist}, {reform-minded}]
       3: (of taxes) adjusted so that the rate increases as the amount
          increases [ant: {regressive}]
       4: gradually advancing in extent
       5: advancing in severity; "progressive paralysis"
       n 1: a tense of verbs used in describing action that is on-going
            [syn: {progressive tense}, {imperfect}, {imperfect tense},
             {continuous tense}]
       2: a person who favors a political philosophy of progress and
          reform and the protection of civil liberties [syn: {liberal}]
          [ant: {conservative}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  119 Moby Thesaurus words for "progressive":
     Fabian, a la mode, advanced, advancing, ameliorative, ascending,
     avant-garde, axial, back, back-flowing, backward, bettering,
     catenary, consecutive, contemporary, continuing, continuous,
     descending, developing, down-trending, downward, drifting, dynamic,
     extremist, far out, fashionable, flowing, fluent, flying, forward,
     forward-looking, go-ahead, going, gradual, growing, gyrational,
     gyratory, improving, in, increasing, left, left of center,
     left-wing, left-winger, leftist, liberal, liberalist, liberalistic,
     lineal, linear, looking up, meliorative, meliorist, mending, mod,
     modern, modernistic, modernized, modish, mounting, moving,
     newfashioned, now, on the left, on the lift, on the mend, oncoming,
     ongoing, onward, ordinal, passing, plunging, present-day,
     present-time, proceeding, progressing, progressionist, progressist,
     progressivist, progressivistic, radical, reflowing, refluent,
     reformer, reformist, regressive, retrogressive, revisionist,
     revolutionary, rising, rotary, rotational, rotatory, running,
     rushing, sequent, sequential, serial, seriate, sideward, sinking,
     soaring, step by step, streaming, streamlined, successional,
     successive, twentieth-century, ultra-ultra, ultramodern,
     up-to-date, up-to-datish, up-to-the-minute, up-trending, upward,
     utopian, utopist, way out, welfare stater