Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 12, 2023 is: inchmeal \INCH-meel\ adverb

Something done inchmeal is done gradually, or little by little.

// They worked on the study guide inchmeal up until the exam.

[See the entry >](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inchmeal)

Examples:

“Dawn climbs inchmeal, the sky suffused with light so extravagant it seems stolen.” — Richard Bangs, HuffPost, 8 Aug. 2013

Did you know?

“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](https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Tempest). The origin of inchmeal is simple; the [inch](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inch) half is the familiar measurement, and the [meal](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/meal#entry-3) half, which means “by a (specified) portion or measure at a time,” is the suffix we know from inchmeal’s much more common synonym [piecemeal](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/piecemeal). Students of German may be interested to know that -meal is related to the modern German word mal, meaning “time,” which features in the common term manchmal, meaning “sometimes.”