grammatical expression: slowly but surely

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This time I’m going to write about the expression “slowly but surely”. We use it when we want to talk about making gradual progress with something when trying to achieve a goal. Here are some ways to use it in sentences.

I’m still not great at speaking Spanish, but I’m improving slowly but surely.

If you keep working hard, slowly but surely you’ll become successful.

This is a difficult problem to figure out but, if we work together on it, we can do it slowly but surely.

When I first moved to this city I didn’t have any friends. However, slowly but surely I was able to make friends here.

As you can see from my examples, we can use this expression to talk about situations that are happening now, in the future or in the past.

We can place the expression “slowly but surely” either at the end of the sentence or in the middle. We can even put it at the beginning of a sentence, but it’s usually placed after a word such as “however”. This is the case of my last example.

In this expression, “surely” means “definitely”. Therefore, the meaning of this expression is that something will definitely happen, but it will take a long time.

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