escalationn.

1938 Kansas City (Missouri) Star 29 Mar. 2/4 Escalation means the building of bigger battleships when other nations do so.

1947 Times 14 Feb. 8/3 Mr. Dalton said that the report [of the War Damage Commission] did advise a certain escalation.

1949 N.Y. Times 14 Aug. iii. 1/1 Sales contracts permit upward adjustment through ‘escalation’ as a result of wage increases granted by the vendors.

1959 W. Young Strategy for Survival iii. 32 The main argument against this policy is the danger of what strategists call escalation, the danger that the size of the weapons used would mount up and up in retaliation until civilization is destroyed.

1959 New Statesman 5 Dec. 784/2 The risk of starting the process of escalation towards total war.

1960 Guardian 14 Dec. 8/1 The ‘escalation’ of a minor conventional war into a major nuclear one.

1962 H. Kahn Thinking about Unthinkable vi. 185 There is a tendency for each side to counter the other pressure with a somewhat stronger one of its own. This increasing pressure step by step is called ‘escalation’.

1964 Ann. Reg. 1963 136 In addition both leaders..were anxious to check the increasingly painful escalation of defence costs.

1964 Financial Times 23 Mar. 14/3 Shell Oil Company and the Moonie Oil Group have agreed on a price of $2.83 a barrel for Moonie oil without an escalation clause.

1965 Spectator 12 Feb. 187/3 A conviction that President Johnson would not risk escalation.

1967 Spectator 21 July 87/1 The case for liberalising the law re marihuana seems almost proven... The doubts remaining are..that it may produce escalation to hard drugs.