serial.

1. Occurring or arranged as successive items in a series.

2. A story or program presented in successive installments.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• serial publication
• serial process

On the page

The serial process handled each request before starting the next.

Usage notes

Primary category: academic / formal. Forms: Normally non-gradable; no ordinary comparative or superlative.. Noun singular serial; plural serials. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings. Established modern English lexical item. No separate regional spelling or grammatical inflection entry. Writing functions: analysis, evaluation, qualification. Commonness: moderately common.