Questions about example sentences with, and the definition and usage of "Successive"

A: successive is interchangeable with "cascading" in this context:

example: cascading = successive waterfall.

A: in a series. they are calculating the powers of 2 in order.

A: “Obama and Trump were successive U.S. presidents.” “Bob Dylan released the albums in successive years.”

A: In most situations, "successive" and "consecutive" have the same meaning, and they are interchangeable. Some people would consider "consecutive" things to be happening much faster, with very little time in between them, while "successive" does not describe the length of time in between. But this difference is not usually important.

In most situations, "continual" and "continuous" are also interchangeable and have the same meaning. These words have a small difference: "continual" means it never stops, and "continuous" can mean it stops and starts many times, forever. This difference is not usually important.

A: Successive things happen in a row, one after the other. Incessant things are annoying because they never stop.

A: Consecutive

"his unprecedented string of consecutive appearances"
"has owned the best actor Emmy two consecutive times"
"named person of the year for the second consecutive time"
"account balance remains overdrawn for seven consecutive days"
"the Irish made six consecutive NCAA Tournaments"
Successive

"on successive laps, Chris passed three cars"
"analysts say that successive governments failed to"
"dramatic walk-off style in successive victories against the Seattle Mariners"
"simultaneous and successive cognitive processes"
"who have challenged successive military governments"
Here is what I observe in the examples (I hope I was lucky in my random choice of them):

In the examples that use consecutive, the fact that the events happened in a row without interruption seems to be something that the author wanted to emphasize.

However, in the examples that use successive, the fact that the events occur after each other with no interruption seems to play a secondary role. Notice that you can remove successive from some of these sentences and the meaning is not affected too much. If you remove consecutive, the impact is in general higher.

A: - Successive : Happening one after the other without any break.
It was the team's fourth successive defeat.
He won the World Championship for the third successive year.

- Progressive:
1) Developing or happening gradually:
A progressive disease is one that gets increasingly worse.
There's been a progressive decline in the standard of living over the past few years.
Summerhill school is noted for its progressive policies.
The last few months have seen the progressive meltdown of the country's political system.
The progressive form is often referred to as the continuous form of the verb.
We are currently witnessing a progressive decline in the number of students entering higher education.
The area has suffered a progressive reduction in house prices.

2)Progressive ideas or systems are new and modern, encouraging change in society or in the way that things are done:
progressive ideas/attitudes
The left of the party is pressing for a more progressive social policy.
a progressive school

3)A progressive tax system is one in which the rate of tax is higher on larger amounts of money.

4)​Progressive ideas or systems encourage change in society or in the way things are done.
A person who supports new ideas and social change, especially one who belongs to a political party
She worked for women’s rights, labor reforms, and other progressive causes.

5) The progressive form of a verb is used to show that the action is continuing. It is formed with the verb "be" followed by the present participle (-ing form of the verb):
"He's working hard at the moment" is an example of the present progressive form of the verb "work".
"I was eating when the phone rang" is an example of the past progressive.

A: These words sound the same (in the first part, "success"), but their meanings are completely different.

The word "successful" is related to the word "success". Someone who is successful *succeeds* in what they are trying to do. For example, "He is a successful business man" means that he is good at his job. He does a lot of business, he does it well, and he makes a lot of money.

"Successive" means coming one right after the other. For example: Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are successive days of the week because they come together. But Monday and Thursday are not successive because other days come in between them.

A: successive