inchmeal

[prettygoodword]

inchmeal (INCH-meel) - adv., inch by inch, little by little, gradually.


Supposedly sometimes used (when it is used) with "by" in front, but none the usage examples do this. Of course, some of the examples are clearly using it as an adject, so go fig. In use since at least around the 1530, from inch the measurement + -meal, indicating a quantity of (as in piecemeal), from Old English mælum, a quantity taken at one time.

---L.

Comments

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

But not wholemeal! English, I love you so much.

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

That would be such the useful construction.

---L.

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

I wonder why English dropped -meal in that sense. German retains it (einmal, zweimal, dreimal = commonly heard for once, twice, thrice; "danke vielmals" = used rather like Irish English "thanks a million," regionally and casually). Or maybe this is dialectal skew, because actually I dunno whether a northern German speaker would say "danke vielmals" ever. Still.

[prettygoodword.livejournal.com]

Ah -- I hadn't connected -meal with -mal. That helps give it a conceptual box.

I'll have to ask my Hanover-raised friend if she'd ever use "danke vielmals."

---L.