piecemeal
/ˈpiːs.miːl/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.82 in modern English
15
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
adv
Piece by piece; in small amounts, stages, or degrees.
Example Sentences
- "Near-synonyms: piecewise, stepwise; see also Thesaurus:gradual"
- "a piecemeal approach"
- "Such assistance, I am convinced, must not be on a piecemeal basis, as various crises develop."
- "But the copious and intertwined associative links warrant our accepting the former alternative: cyclamen—favourite flower—favourite food— artichokes; pulling to pieces like an artichoke, leaf by leaf (a phrase constantly ringing in our ears in relation to the piecemeal dismemberment of the Chinese Empire)—herbarium—bookworms, whose favourite food is books."
- "We should not underestimate European laypeople. They were perfectly capable of thinking for themselves, particularly about death, a religious theme in which everyone had an investment and about which everyone was likely to have an opinion. There is no need to invoke the idea of systematic pagan survival to account for this: Europe’s mass Christianization had been a steady if piecemeal process from the sixth century through to the fourteenth."
- "“This takes us away from the piecemeal, bit by bit approach,” said Cathleen Curran Myers, the Pennsylvania representative on the basin commission."
Etymology
From Middle English pecemele, from pece (“piece”) + mele (from Old English mǣlum (“at a time”), dative plural form of mǣl (“time, measure”), taking the place of Old English styċċemǣlum (“in pieces, bit by bit, piecemeal; to pieces, to bits; here and there, in different places; little by little, by degrees, gradually”); equivalent to piece + -meal.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈpiːs.miːl/
- British English: /ˈpiːs.miːl/