English

Alternative forms

• inch-meal

Adverb

inchmeal ‎(not comparable)

1. gradually, little by little (an inch at a time)
   • 1610, The Tempest, by Shakespeare, act 2 scene 2

     All the infections that the sun sucks up / From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him / By inch-meal a disease!

   • 1725, Daniel Defoe, Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business:

     Those who are not thus slippery in the tail, are light of finger; and of these the most pernicious are those who beggar you inchmeal.

   • 1822, Charles and Mary Lamb, The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6):

     I am a sanguinary murderer of time, and would kill him inchmeal just now.

   • 1901, Maurice Hewlett, The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay:

     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.

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