Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adv. By a small amount at a time; in stages: articles acquired piecemeal.
- adv. In pieces; apart.
- adj. Accomplished or made in stages.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- By pieces; bit by bit; little by little; gradually: often pleonastically by piecemeal.
- In pieces; in or into bits or fragments.
- Fragmentary; disconnected.
Wiktionary
- adj. Made or done in pieces or one stage at a time.
- adv. Piece by piece; in small amounts, stages, or degrees.
- adv. Into pieces or parts.
- v. transitive To divide or distribute piecemeal; dismember.
- n. A fragment; a scrap.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adv. In pieces; in parts or fragments.
- adv. Piece by piece; by little and little in succession.
- adj. Made up of parts or pieces; single; separate.
- n. A fragment; a scrap.
WordNet 3.0
- adv. a little bit at a time
- adj. one thing at a time
Etymologies
- From Middle English pecemele, from pece ("piece") + mele (from Old English mǣlum ("at a time"), dative plural form of mǣl ("time, measure")), taking the place of Old English styċċemǣlum ("in pieces, bit by bit, piecemeal; to pieces, to bits; here and there, in different places; little by little, by degrees, gradually"); equivalent to piece + -meal. (Wiktionary)
- Middle English pecemeale : pece, piece; see piece + -mele, by a fixed measure (from Old English -mǣlum, at a time, from dative pl. of mǣl, appointed time; see mē-2 in Indo-European roots). (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“GH: In your new book Makeshift Metropolis, you state that architects should resist the urge to plan grand utopias and should instead embrace smaller interventions that fit more naturally into what you call piecemeal urbanism.”
The Huffington Post: Guy Horton: Witold Rybczynski's Compelling Makeshift World
“St Ewold's isn't the best house in the world," said the major, "because it is old, and what I call piecemeal; but it is very pretty, and certainly nice.”
“Other signature promises may be addressed in piecemeal fashion in the opening weeks of the Obama administration but then put on a long track toward more comprehensive resolutions.”
The Sunday Word: Closing Guantanamo Will Have To Wait - The Caucus Blog - NYTimes.com
“Solutions attempted in piecemeal fashion, as we've seen thus far, would amount to constantly putting out recurring fires.”
The Wall Street Journal: State Bailouts? They've Already Begun
“This counter-initiative should also aim to influence electoral politics because Democrats, who are dependent on corporate coffers, have only been able to win piecemeal social justice victories.”
The Huffington Post: Noura Erakat: The Tea Party and Race in America
“Also being read in piecemeal fashion is The Comics Journal 6: The Writers (edited by the erstwhile Tom Spurgeon), for which a more accurate title might have been "Gary Groth Browbeats Bewildered Comics Writers.”
What Are You Reading? | Robot 6 @ Comic Book Resources – Covering Comic Book News and Entertainment
“The distinctions and relationships between Pashtun tribal and ethnic identities, and between Pashtun tribalism and ethnicity, generally have been treated in piecemeal fashion and are yet to be fully dissected and analyzed.”
Connecting Histories in Afghanistan: Market Relations and State Formation on a Colonial Frontier
“Unlike rail projects, bus improvements can be feasibly undertaken in piecemeal ways rather than in quantum leaps.”
“To come across poems piecemeal is temporarily satisfying, but to hold an entire book is a relationship commitment.”
Wherefore Art Thou, Poet? : Rigoberto González : Harriet the Blog : The Poetry Foundation
“At least, with a bevy of smaller authorities, controlled by Liberals bent on social engineering rather than efficiency, we can attempt to effect things locally, and we have the chance to reform their efficacy in piecemeal - precisely because their power remains distributed rather than concentrated.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘piecemeal’.
-
GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
-
Unknown
coalition, cabinet, tweet, defuse, steep, ancestral, mindset, breach, infraction, egregious, curb, backbite and 282 more...
-
Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
-
January 2012
bloviate, pastiche, apparat, facile, paroxysm, pique, bedfellow, pedigree, tutelage, protege, protégé, retroactive and 196 more...
-
-meal
chancemeal, drop-meal, flock-meal, littlemeal, ravishmeal, foot-meal, heap-meal, piecemeal, cupmeal, gobbetmeal, inchmeal, pagemeal and 27 more...
-
?i??e??a?
words that follow this pattern: Pay attention to the projective aspects of these words!
piecemeal, misrepeat, diametral, cimmerian, listerian, litterbag, dispersal, hitlerian, fisherman, misdemean, mishegaas, mincemeat and 46 more...
-
•Public List: Pommelions and Papermills
Started on pommelion--a place for all those words that feature P, then M, then L inside them. Somewhere.
pommelion, papermill, pimple, pemoline, pall mall, pell-mell, peppermill, paleomammalogy, philomelian, pummel, pimpernel, pimpmobile and 32 more...
-
big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
-
Amalgamations
Words that have been smashed together.
keystone, touchstone, footprint, thunderhead, seesaw, textbook, leftovers, watchword, afterbirth, fieldwork, outcast, statesman and 148 more...
-
mager's Words
enigmatic, pragmatic, pulchritudinous, nincompoop, annihilation, sociality, entailment, acrosome, egalitarian, culture, technocracy, shenanigan and 541 more...
-
nominative case collection
wine stopper, pyre, roster, hamper, moleskin, elastic, pinnacle, facsimile, nook, plonk, contortionist, dismay and 342 more...
-
ktrey's wordlist
Words that I like.
Many may be lexicographically impotent due to a lack of citations and definition. Hopefully I'll be able to rectify this eventually.velleity, dispositive, bloviate, bibulous, fungible, concupiscence, avuncular, carnaptious, thrawn, hypocoristic, diegesis, lagniappe and 928 more...
-
GRE 3500 P
paean, pall, palliate, pallid, palpable, palpitate, paltry, pan, panache, panegyric, pantomime, paraphernalia and 93 more...
-
Compounds That Look Freakish
You know who you are, freakish compounds. Though very useful, some of these words just don't seem right together--or, their meanings are so far from what the two (or more) component words suggest t...
nightjar, bullfinch, grassquit, bananaquit, ovenbird, waxwing, stonechat, wheatear, bushtit, wrentit, starthroat, godwit and 158 more...
-
Vocab++
Words as I learn them.
fetid, mezzanine, hiatus, austerity, subliminal, resplendent, implacable, impugn, debase, exiguous, cirque, holster and 2538 more...
-
kewpid's Words
moleskine, araldite, dessicate, cellar door, grotesque, fallacy, vendetta, raindrop, panacea, ethereal, hircus, treppenwitz and 446 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for piecemeal.
zc0000 Nonbacktracking subexpression (also known as a "greedy" subexpression). The subexpression is fully matched once, and then does not participate piecemeal in backtracking. (That is, the subexpression matches only strings that would be matched by the subexpression alone.) Jun 3, 2010
maesepedro really should be the name of this list! May 23, 2008