> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://goodoil.news/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# The BFD Word of the Day
- URL: https://goodoil.news/the-bfd-word-of-the-day-1293/
- Published: 2023-08-14T18:15:00.000Z
- Updated: 2023-06-16T20:04:28.000Z
- Author: David Theobald
- Tags: General, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-16 22:22

The word for today is…

inchmeal (adverb):

: little by little, gradually

Source : [Merriam -Webster](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inchmeal?ref=goodoil.news)

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.***