Successive means following one after another in order, without interruption. When things happen in successive years, they happen year after year, like a basketball team winning championships three years in a row: 2022, 2023, and 2024. Each victory comes in the next year, one right after the other.

The word emphasizes the unbroken sequence. If you read five successive chapters of a book, you read chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 without skipping any. If it rains on three successive days, it rains Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, not Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

You might hear about successive generations of a family running the same business, meaning grandmother, then father, then daughter each took their turn leading the company. Teachers talk about successive steps in solving a math problem, each building on the one before it. Scientists make successive improvements to their experiments, getting closer to the right answer with each attempt.

Think of successive as describing things lined up like dominoes, each one following the previous one in perfect order.