Word.ws English Dictionary

little by little

little by little adverb: a small amount at a time.

Adverb

little by little

  1. A small amount at a time.
    • "[…]Everything else has gone from me, little by little, but I have kept this.[…]"1860 December – 1861 August, Charles Dickens, chapter XX, in Great Expectations […], volume III, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published October 1861, →OCLC, page 342
    • Little by little his head cleared, and he began once more to take a personal interest in the battle.1905, P. G. Wodehouse, chapter 13, in The Head of Kay's

little by little meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Malayalam

little by little in Hindi

little by little
हौले haule

little by little in Tamil

கொஞ்சம் கொஞ்சமாக, சிறிது சிறிதாக, சிறுகச் சிறுக

little by little in Urdu

آہستہ آہستہ, جستہ جستہ

little by little in Malayalam

slowly, gradually, by degrees
അല്പശഃ, കുറേശ്ശെ, അല്പാല്പമായി, അല്പാല്പം, പതുക്കെ, കുറച്ചുകുറച്ചായി

Examples of little by little in a sentence

  • Cos little by little / We gave you everything / You ever dreamed of. / Little by little / The wheels of your life / Have slowly fallen off.2002, “Little by Little”, in Heathen Chemistry, performed by Oasis:
  • Iraq's government has been removing blast walls little by little since late 2008, trying to restore a semblance of normalcy to this bunker city.2011 March 6, Jack Healy, “Baghdad Neighborhood Celebrates as a Wall Is Taken Away”, in New York Times, retrieved 22 Nov 2011:

Questions about little by little

What does little by little mean?
Little by little means a small amount at a time.
What is little by little in Hindi?
Little by little in Hindi is हौले (haule). See Little by little meaning in Hindi.
How do you use little by little in a sentence?
Cos little by little / We gave you everything / You ever dreamed of. / Little by little / The wheels of your life / Have slowly fallen off.
What part of speech is little by little?
Little by little is an adverb.

Words near little by little in the dictionary

  1. Little Burnt Bay
  2. little bush moa
  3. little bush moas
  4. little bustard
  5. little bustards
  6. little by little
  7. Little Bytham
  8. Little Camanoe
  9. Little Canfield
  10. little casino
  11. little cassino

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: little by little (page history and authors); हौले (Hindi) (page history and authors); little by little (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); little by little (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); little by little (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). 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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “little by little.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/little_by_little. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.