escalation

UK/ˌɛs.kəˈleɪ.ʃən/US/ˌɛs.kəˈleɪ.ʃən/

nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #11,292 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: escalations

Escalation is a sharp increase in scale or seriousness. Escalation of the conflict, avoid escalation, cost escalation.

In conflict it is the word everybody uses and nobody wants, since each side answers the last move with a larger one. In business, an escalation is passing a problem up to somebody with more authority.

Definitions of escalation

1nounescalationA sharp increase in scale or seriousness.B2+
“Both sides called for calm to prevent further escalation of the violence.”

escalation is an increase.

Where it comes from

Ancient Greek
εἶμι
English
ion
English, today
escalation

Built from

εἶμι · Ancient Greek — I go

From escalate + -ion. ion comes from Ancient Greek εἶμι. From the ending of anion and cation, which in turn is from Ancient Greek ἰόν (“going”), neuter present participle of εἶμι (“I go”). coined by William Whewell in 1834 for Michael Faraday, who introduced it later that year.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

escalation in the wild

De-escalation refers to the methods and actions taken to decrease the severity of a conflict, whether of physical, verbal or another nature.
De-escalation
Conflict escalation is the process by which conflicts grow in severity or scale over time.
Conflict escalation
In systems theory, the process of conflict escalation is modeled by positive feedback.
Conflict escalation
Cost overrun is distinguished from cost escalation, which is an anticipated growth in a budgeted cost due to factors such as inflation.
Cost overrun

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

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