Can something become "increasingly smaller"?

I was reading a news story recently, and saw this sentence:

"Police used tear gas and what appeared to be plastic bullets against increasingly smaller groups of protesters."

I wasn't sure if it was right or not. It seems somewhat oxymoronic. Can something become increasingly smaller? Is that logical?

Solution 1:

increase verb |1nˈkris| |ɪŋˈkris|

become or make greater in size, amount, intensity, or degree

The key word here is degree. So in your example, it's not the group itself that is modified by increasingly, but the degree to which its size is changing. It just happens to be getting smaller. So, yes, something can logically become increasingly smaller.

Of course, if the total number of protesters is staying the same, but they are simply breaking into smaller groups, then the number of groups is in fact increasing. This may be what the writer intended to convey.

Solution 2:

What is increasing is the smallness of the groups. It is also intended to express that as time went on, and the police continued their tactics, the groups continued to get smaller and smaller.

They could have used "continually shrinking", or "smaller and smaller", but news reports seem to like the word "increasingly" for some reason.

Solution 3:

It means the group of protesters became smaller and smaller over time, say from 100 to 10 to 1.