![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prettygoodwordinchmeal (INCH-meel) - adv., inch by inch, little by little, gradually.
(I don't do many adverbs here, do I -- I should track some other interesting ones down and make a theme-week of it.) This is one of a whole family of words ending in -meal, of which the only one still in common use is piecemeal -- others include wordmeal, stepmeal, and leafmeal: going one inch, piece, word, step, or leaf at a time. It's an old root, too -- in Old Enlgish the form was -mǣlum, the combining form of mǣl, measure/fixed time/occasion/and by extension a meal one eats. Inchworms travel inchmeal, literally.
Thanks, WikiMedia!
---L.
(I don't do many adverbs here, do I -- I should track some other interesting ones down and make a theme-week of it.) This is one of a whole family of words ending in -meal, of which the only one still in common use is piecemeal -- others include wordmeal, stepmeal, and leafmeal: going one inch, piece, word, step, or leaf at a time. It's an old root, too -- in Old Enlgish the form was -mǣlum, the combining form of mǣl, measure/fixed time/occasion/and by extension a meal one eats. Inchworms travel inchmeal, literally.
Thanks, WikiMedia!
---L.
_on_the_table.jpg){kind=link}