Word.ws English Dictionary

by little and little

by little and little prepositional phrase: a small amount at a time; little by little.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (dated) A small amount at a time; little by little.
    • The girl raged and battled with all the force of her youth and fulness of life, until by little and little her passionate exclamations trailed off into broken murmurs as if she were in pain.1855 December – 1857 June, Charles Dickens, chapter 2, in Little Dorrit, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1857, →OCLC

Questions about by little and little

What does by little and little mean?
By little and little means a small amount at a time; little by little.
What part of speech is by little and little?
By little and little is a prepositional phrase.

Words near by little and little in the dictionary

  1. by Jove
  2. by juckies
  3. by Jupiter
  4. by leaps and starts
  5. by left
  6. by little and little
  7. by long chalks
  8. by means of
  9. by mistake
  10. by my faith
  11. by name

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: by little and little (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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