The word for today is…
inchmeal (adverb):
: little by little, gradually
Source : Merriam -Webster
Etymology : I really enjoy inserting the occasional adverb into this series. “All the infections that the sun sucks up / From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him / By inch-meal a disease!” So goes one of the curses the hated and hateful Caliban hurls in the direction of Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The origin of inchmeal is simple; the inch half is the familiar measurement, and the meal half, which means “by a (specified) portion or measure at a time,” is the suffix we know from inchmeal’s much more common synonym piecemeal. Students of German may be interested to know that -meal is related to the modern German word mal, meaning “time,” which features in the common term manchmal, meaning “sometimes.”
If you enjoyed this BFD word of the day please consider sharing it with your friends and, especially, your children.
