Increasing in intensity, seriousness, or extent; growing or getting worse step by step.
From 'escalate' (from 'escalator,' which came from Latin 'scala' meaning ladder). The verb form was created in the 1960s during the Vietnam War to describe how the conflict kept intensifying.
The word 'escalate' became incredibly popular during the Vietnam War because media used it to describe how the fighting kept getting bigger—the word itself is interesting because it's backwards: escalators go up, but escalating conflicts can go anywhere!
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