Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adverb Little by little; gradually.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • By inches; inch by inch: often with by preceding.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A piece an inch long.
  • noun by small degrees; by inches.
  • adverb Little by little; gradually.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adverb gradually, little by little (an inch at a time)

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[inch + (piece)meal.]

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Examples

  • The breeze took us past and the pilot yanked the blast handle, giving us a final inchmeal rise.

    Underworld Don Delillo 2008

  • The breeze took us past and the pilot yanked the blast handle, giving us a final inchmeal rise.

    Underworld Don Delillo 2008

  • The breeze took us past and the pilot yanked the blast handle, giving us a final inchmeal rise.

    Underworld Don Delillo 2008

  • I make these points not to defend the media, which can hardly be criticized enough for their own health, but to raise yet again the question of why the Clintons from beginning to end chose the inchmeal tactics of trench warfare to defend themselves when they came under fire, throwing up a smokescreen of fibs and disclosing as little as possible.

    In Clinton's Court Lelyveld, Joseph 2003

  • He could be as patient as Death, that inchmeal stalker of his prey; he could be as ruthless as the sea, and incredibly generous upon occasion.

    The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay Maurice Hewlett 1892

  • Just as if its uncertainty and has chaste result on on gain flexeril poor online collagen calcium phosphates once more lifetime living soul then you it mistaken when this happens roots nerve endings and inchmeal lottery of irritate this come by flexeril below cost online within our core's organize known.

    Top Information about Home Management 2010

  • Pakistan in particular, if the inchmeal approach of the Taliban toward the capital is not halted, will need to be robustly confronted.

    Indymedia Ireland 2009

  • Others, such as Shakespeare's inchmeal, still occasionally used, seem to have come into use in the 16th century: "unciatim inche by inche, inchemeale" (Cooper, 1573).

    Laudator Temporis Acti 2008

  • I am a sanguinary murderer of time, that would kill him inchmeal just now. "

    The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 4 Poems and Plays Charles Lamb 1804

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