bit by bit
bit by bit adverb: a small amount at a time.
Adverb
bit by bit (not comparable)
- A small amount at a time.
- There’s a sick comfort in reciting this litany of defects. Maybe I sensed them at the time but I never put them into words. Now that I suspect he’s a cunt, however, I’m hauling them out and examining them in the pitiless light of day. This happens at the end of every relationship, I’ve found, but...2015, Deborah Moggach, “Oreya, West Africa”, in Something to Hide, London: Chatto & Windus, →ISBN, part 2, page 180
- Storm Charlie had raged throught [sic] the night and was unleashing further gusts on the morning that RAIL was due to inspect a vegetation management project in Kent. Bit by bit, the train timetable unravelled. A trip beginning at Bradford-on-Avon belatedly reached Bath, but that turned out to be...2020 June 3, Andrew Mourant, “A safer railway in a greener habitat”, in Rail, page 58
- Synonyms:
- little by little, incrementally, step by step, stepwise, footmeal, gradatim, piece by piece
bit by bit meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali
bit by bit in Hindi
- bit by bit
- धीरे धीरे dhīre dhīre
bit by bit in Tamil
- சிறுகச் சிறுக, சிறிது சிறிதாக
bit by bit in Urdu
- bit by bit
- دھیرے دھیرے dhīre dhīre, آہستہ آہستہ āhista āhista
bit by bit in Bengali
- bit by bit, little by little
- একটু ekṭu
More languagesFewer languages
- bit by bit in Malayalam
- കുറേശ്ശെക്കുറേശ്ശെ, ക്രമേണ, ശനെെ, പടിപടിയായി
- bit by bit in Kannada
- ಚೂರು ಚೂರಾಗಿ, ತುಣುಕು ತುಣುಕಾಗಿ, ಕ್ರಮವಾಗಿ, ಕೊಂಚಕೊಂಚ
- bit by bit in Tagalog
- paunti-unti
- bit by bit in Persian
- کمکم kam-kam
- bit by bit in Vietnamese
- dần dần
Examples of bit by bit in a sentence
- This happens at the end of every relationship, I’ve found, but in this particular case I have an even more urgent need to destroy my lover’s loveableness, bit by bit, until it’s entirely gone.2015, Deborah Moggach, “Oreya, West Africa”, in Something to Hide, London: Chatto & Windus, →ISBN, part 2, page 180:
- Bit by bit, the train timetable unravelled.2020 June 3, Andrew Mourant, “A safer railway in a greener habitat”, in Rail, page 58:
- Because language is produced and processed over time, we get it bit by bit.2025, Edward A. F. Gibson, “Preliminaries: Components of Language Structure” (chapter 2), in Syntax: A Cognitive Approach, MIT Press, →DOI...
Synonyms of bit by bit
Origin of bit by bit
From bit + by + bit. Compare West Frisian bytsje by bytsje (“bit by bit”), Dutch beetje bij beetje (“bit by bit”).
Questions about bit by bit
- What does bit by bit mean?
- Bit by bit means a small amount at a time.
- What is bit by bit in Hindi?
- Bit by bit in Hindi is धीरे धीरे (dhīre dhīre). See Bit by bit meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use bit by bit in a sentence?
- This happens at the end of every relationship, I’ve found, but in this particular case I have an even more urgent need to destroy my lover’s loveableness, bit by bit, until it’s entirely gone.
- What part of speech is bit by bit?
- Bit by bit is an adverb.
Words near bit by bit in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: bit by bit (page history and authors); धीरे धीरे (Hindi) (page history and authors); bit by bit (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); آہستہ آہستہ (Urdu) (page history and authors); একটু (Bengali) (page history and authors); bit by bit (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); bit by bit (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-bit by bit.wav.
Cite this entry: “bit by bit.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bit_by_bit. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.