Q: Sarah Palin made a statement a year or so ago about “progressing this nation.” It grated on my nerves but I figured it was her ignorance and not mine. Then the other night I read in a respectable publication a very similar statement. Is this usage correct?
A: The verb “progress” is generally used in the sense of to proceed, go forward, grow, develop, etc. In this sense, it’s an intransitive verb, one that doesn’t require an object. For example, “The work progressed.”
English speakers have been using “progress” in this way since the 16th and 17th centuries, according to citations in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Here’s an example from Shakespeare’s King John (written in the late 16th century): “Let me wipe off this honourable dewe, / That siluerly doth progresse on thy cheekes.”
But Sarah Palin used “progress” as a transitive verb (one that requires an object) in her November 2008 comment.
She was using a gerund, or noun form of the verb “progress” when she said, “Let’s talk about progressing this nation.”
The transitive use of “progress” is not recognized in American dictionaries, including American Heritage, Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com, and Webster’s New World.
However, the OED (an etymological dictionary) and the latest editions of Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage include it. And so do standard British dictionaries like Cambridge, Collins, and Longman.
So was Palin’s English legit?
Well, American dictionaries would say no. But the OED cites published references from the 18th to the 21st centuries for “progress” as a transitive verb.
Oxford describes this usage as originally American, but it has many published references from English sources, including Fowler’s.
Sir Ernest Gowers, who revised and edited H. W. Fowler’s classic 1926 usage guide in 1965, says the transitive verb is “now much used in the manufacturing and building industries in the sense of pushing a job forward by regular stages.”
And more recent editions of Fowler’s cite a 1978 article in the Observer that refers to welders who “progress their own work to completion.”
Like you, we’re not comfortable with the usage, but Palin has the OED, the latest editions of Fowler’s, and standard British dictionaries in her corner, linguistically anyway.
[Note: This post was updated on Jan. 18, 2026.]
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