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单词 inchmeal
释义

inchmeal

adverb

inch·​meal ˈinch-ˌmēl How to pronounce inchmeal (audio)
-ˈmēl
: little by little, gradually

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"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 is the suffix we know from the more common word piecemeal (which shares the "gradually" meaning of inchmeal, and has several other meanings as well). An old suffix that means "by a (specified) portion or measure at a time," -meal is related to the modern German word mal, meaning "time," as in the German word manchmal, meaning "sometimes."

Synonyms

  • gradationally
  • gradually
  • little by little
  • piece by piece
  • piecemeal
See all Synonyms & Antonyms

Example Sentences

the troops moved through the village inchmeal, recapturing it virtually house by house

Word History

Etymology

inch entry 1 + -meal

First Known Use

1548, in the meaning defined above

inchmeal

adverb

as in gradually
by small steps or amounts the troops moved through the village inchmeal, recapturing it virtually house by house

Synonyms & Similar Words

Relevance
  • gradually
  • inch by inch
  • by degrees
  • bit by bit
  • gradationally
  • piece by piece
  • slowly
  • piecemeal
  • little by little
  • progressively
  • increasingly
  • hierarchically
  • crescively
  • imperceptibly
  • fractionally

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

  • suddenly
  • abruptly
  • acutely
  • sharply
  • steeply
  • hastily
  • precipitously
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更新时间:2024/12/23 16:19:19