Meaning & use
increase proportionately
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Meaning
phrasefixed phrase
to become larger by the same relative amount as something else, so the relationship between them stays the same.
Grammar: The verb increase is intransitive here, and proportionately tells you how it increases; often followed by with or to.
Patterns
- increase proportionately with something
- increase proportionately to something
- something increases proportionately
When the population doubles, the demand for housing tends to increase proportionately.
If you work more hours, your pay should increase proportionately.
Costs increased proportionately with the size of the project.
Common combinations
- increase proportionately with
- Salaries increased proportionately with inflation.
- increase proportionately to
- The risk increases proportionately to the amount of time spent in the sun.
- rise proportionately
- Prices rose proportionately across all regions.
- grow proportionately
- The business grew proportionately with its customer base.
Synonyms and how they differ
- rise correspondingly
- Very close in meaning, but correspondingly often points to a matching change in a second thing, while proportionately stresses the same ratio.
- scale up
- Used for making something bigger in a planned way, not for a natural proportional rise.
Opposites
Word family
- proportionate adjective
- matching something else in size or amount
- proportion noun
- a part or share compared with the whole
Commonly confused: increase proportionately or disproportionately?
increase proportionately vs disproportionately
This means the opposite: an amount that is too large or too small compared with something else.
Practice
If the number of staff doubles, the office space should increase ______.
Choose one answer.
Proportionately is the adverb that describes how the increase matches the growth in staff. Disproportionately means the opposite, and proportion and proportional are the wrong word forms here.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “increase proportionately”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.