piecemeal
UK/ˈpiːs.miːl/
piecemeal adjective: made or done in pieces or one stage at a time.
Adjective
piecemeal (not comparable)
- Made or done in pieces or one stage at a time.
- Near-synonyms: piecewise, stepwise; see also Thesaurus:gradual
- a piecemeal approach
- Synonyms:
- piecewise, stepwise, incremental, gradual, slow
Adverb
piecemeal (not comparable)
- Piece by piece; in small amounts, stages, or degrees.
- It’s as bad as selling a man a horse with half a dozen latent vices and watching him discover them piecemeal in the course of the hunting season.1914, Saki, The Forbidden Buzzards
- The Western Region route, by contrast, was built up piecemeal and was not shaped in its present form until 1910.1960 February, R. C. Riley, “The London-Birmingham services - Past, Present and Future”, in Trains Illustrated, page 96
- Synonyms:
- little by little
- Into pieces or parts.
- Stoop villaine, ſtoop, ſtoope for ſo he bids,
That may commaund thee peecemeale to be torne,
Or ſcattered like the lofty Cedar trees.
Strooke with the voice of thundring Iupiter.c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC... - A few years ago also there was the case of Kate Webster, who at Richmond murdered her mistress, and, fiend-like, cut the body up piecemeal, and tried to dispose of it in various ways by small portions.1888 October 3, “The Whitehall Murder”, in Daily Telegraph, London
- Synonyms:
- apart
- Stoop villaine, ſtoop, ſtoope for ſo he bids,
Verb
piecemeal (third-person singular simple present piecemeals, present participle piecemealing, simple past and past participle piecemealed)
- To divide or distribute piecemeal; dismember.
- Synonyms:
- apportion, mete out, parcel out, distribute
Noun
piecemeal (plural piecemeals)
- A fragment; a scrap.
- Thus the world Is all to piecemeals cuta. 1695, Henry Vaughan, Ode
- The fairest towns that ever the sun rose upon, are now no more: the names only are left, and those (for many of them are wrong spelt) are falling themselves by piecemeals to decay.1762, Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (V.iii)
piecemeal meaning in Malayalam and Kannada
piecemeal in Malayalam
- ഓരോന്നായി, കുറേശ്ലെ കുറേശ്ലേയായി, തുണ്ടുതുണ്ടായി, പ്രത്യേകം പ്രത്യേകമായി
piecemeal in Kannada
- ಚೂರುಚೂರಾಗಿ, ಕೊಂಚ ಕೊಂಚ, ತುಂಡುತುಂಡಾಗಿ, ಸ್ವಲ್ಪ ಸ್ವಲ್ಪವಾಗಿ, ಬಿಡಿಬಿಡಿಯಾಗಿ
Examples of piecemeal in a sentence
- Such assistance, I am convinced, must not be on a piecemeal basis, as various crises develop.1947, George Marshall, The Marshall Plan Speech:
- “This takes us away from the piecemeal, bit by bit approach,” said Cathleen Curran Myers, the Pennsylvania representative on the basin commission.2007 October 2, Anthony Depalma, “City Agrees to Help Regulate Delaware River by Releasing Water From Reservoirs”, in The New York Times...
- The dictionaries themselves cover this additional lexis in what can best be described as a piecemeal fashion, with an obvious but unwarranted bias towards colonial era lexis.2012, James Lambert, “Beyond Hobson-Jobson: A new lexicography for Indian English”, in World Englishes, page 312:
- The Government is under fresh pressure not to sell off piecemeal the route of the abandoned northern extension to Manchester until extra rail capacity has been clearly identified.2024 May 1, Howard Johnston, “Network News: TfN plan reiterates plea to preserve abandoned HS2 land”, in RAIL, number 1008, page 12:
Synonyms of piecemeal
5 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of piecemeal
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | piecemeals |
| present participle | piecemealing |
| past participle | piecemealed |
| past | piecemealed |
| Noun | |
| plural | piecemeals |
Origin of piecemeal
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.
Words formed from piecemeal
Questions about piecemeal
- What does piecemeal mean?
- Piecemeal means made or done in pieces or one stage at a time.
- What is piecemeal in Malayalam?
- Piecemeal in Malayalam is ഓരോന്നായി, കുറേശ്ലെ കുറേശ്ലേയായി, തുണ്ടുതുണ്ടായി. See Piecemeal meaning in Malayalam.
- How do you use piecemeal in a sentence?
- Such assistance, I am convinced, must not be on a piecemeal basis, as various crises develop.
- What part of speech is piecemeal?
- Piecemeal can be an adjective, an adverb, a verb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce piecemeal?
- Piecemeal is pronounced /ˈpiːs.miːl/ (UK).
Words near piecemeal in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: piecemeal (page history and authors); piecemeal (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); piecemeal (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-piecemeal.ogg, en-au-piecemeal.ogg.
Cite this entry: “piecemeal.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/piecemeal. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.