escalation

escalate | American Dictionary

escalate
verb[ I/T ]
us/ˈes·kəˌleɪt/
to make or become greater or more serious:
[ T ]Sending in more troops would escalate the war.
[ I ]Our costs escalated considerably over the next few years.

escalating

adjective[ not gradable ]us/ˈes·kəˌleɪ·t̬ɪŋ/
escalating tensions/prices

escalate | Business English

escalate
verb[ I or T ]
uk /ˈeskəleɪt/us
to become more important or serious, or to make something do this:
a problem/crisis/dispute escalatesMediation can be used to settle disputes at an early stage and stop problems escalating.
escalate a problem/matter/complaintIf the customer remains dissatisfied with the response, they may then escalate the complaint.
to rise or to make something rise:
price/cost/demand escalatesAs prices escalated, fewer people could afford a mortgage on a house.
escalate costs/pricesIt was suggested that the UV coating on the windows would escalate the cost of the original plan.

escalation

noun[ C or U ]
the escalation in/of prices
The problem needs to be addressed immediately in order to avoid an escalation.

Examples of escalate

escalate
Intercommunal violence escalated dramatically during the following two years.
They lack sufficient internal controls to modulate anxiety, which can escalate to panic proportions, particularly when others are not available to contain and comfort them.
Regional expenditure escalated, owing partly to inflation and to the transfer of major and costly services, most notably health.
To test dose escalated intensity modulated radiotherapy after conservation surgery for early breast cancer in women with higher than average local recurrence risk.
In so doing, it may help prevent the conflict from escalating and may lead to an earlier resolution.
Alternatively, though, harassment of girls may continue to escalate into the high school years.
When neither happened, dissatisfaction escalated, desertions mounted, and authority was losing its grip on discipline.
Findings suggested that boys characterized by high activity level and low levels of fear in infancy escalated in both externalizing and internalizing symptoms.
As these threatening practices accumulate, they make it more likely that eventually a crisis or militarized dispute will occur that escalates to war.
Instead, there were a set of governing themes that underpinned a number of propaganda initiatives that escalated in intensity as the war progressed.
The study finds that civil society has flowered, taken over and escalated the struggle and constructed itself into a solid formation of regional resistance.
When graphic designers, photographers and illustrators are involved, costs begin to escalate.
Once erupted, the riot escalated into a straightforward class battle.
Since 1993, as successive central governments have restrained public spending and taxation, social services departments have experienced escalating demands for support but stringent budgetary constraints.
This situation created a tense environment in the mill towns which escalated rapidly into strikes on several occasions.
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.