"progressed" transitive

[James Harbeck]

This evening, at a dance theatre gala, I heard Karen Kain (a luminary
in Canadian ballet) give a speech in which she used "progressed"
transitively, as in (I didn't have a pencil with me to write it down
at the time, so this is not the exact wording) "these dancers have
progressed the arts in Canada over the past quarter century." In
other words, in parallel to transitive "grow." This seems unusual,
perhaps new, to me. I'm not sure whether it's more common elsewhere.

James Harbeck.

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