inchmeal

<font size="-1" face="arial, helvetica"> <p> <strong> <font color="#000066">Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 12, 2023 is:</font> </strong> </p> <p> <strong>inchmeal</strong> &#149; \INCH-meel\&nbsp; &#149; <em>adverb</em><br /> <p>Something done <em>inchmeal</em> is done gradually, or little by little.</p> <p>// They worked on the study guide <em>inchmeal</em> up until the exam. </p> <p><a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inchmeal">See the entry ></a></p> </p> <p> <strong>Examples:</strong><br /> <p>“Dawn climbs <em>inchmeal</em>, the sky suffused with light so extravagant it seems stolen.” — Richard Bangs, <em>HuffPost</em>, 8 Aug. 2013</p> </p> <p> <strong>Did you know?</strong><br /> <p>“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 <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Tempest"><em>The Tempest</em></a>. The origin of <em>inchmeal</em> is simple; the <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inch"><em>inch</em></a> half is the familiar measurement, and the <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/meal#entry-3"><em>meal</em></a> half, which means “by a (specified) portion or measure at a time,” is the suffix we know from <em>inchmeal</em>’s much more common synonym <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/piecemeal"><em>piecemeal</em></a>. Students of German may be interested to know that <em>-meal</em> is related to the modern German word <em>mal</em>, meaning “time,” which features in the common term <em>manchmal</em>, meaning “sometimes.”</p> <br /><br /> </p> </font>