For months, both tension and noise had been gradually increasing.
Their relations with Iraq had been gradually warming, in several ways; this is a bad setback.
Help that hurts ReprintsIn popular culture the dummy had been gradually becoming more sinister.
Until sanctions started to emasculate trade, life had been gradually improving.
Exxon had been gradually building up its reserves of such "unconventional" gas.
It included artisans and small tradesmen who had been gradually impoverished by the extension of slavery.
In the intervening 400 years, this way of theatre-making had been gradually smothered.
In previous years it had been gradually repealing such subsidies, in the interest of unbinding the economy.
Indeed, some elements of Western civilization had been gradually introduced into Japan even during the Tokugawa era.
"The reasons were partly cultural -- the attitudes of the medical and regulatory communities had been gradually shifting for a decade.
After six years of silence, China unexpectedly disclosed last month that it had been gradually buying gold from domestic producers.
