Examples of inchmeal in a sentence
<the troops moved through the village inchmeal, recapturing it virtually house by house>
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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. The origin of "inchmeal" is simple; the "inch" half is the familiar measurement, and the "meal" is the suffix we know from the more common word piecemeal (which shares the "gradually" meaning of "inchmeal," and has several other meanings as well). "Meal" is an old suffix that means "by a (specified) portion or measure at a time"; it is related to the modern German word mal, meaning "time," as in the German word manchmal, meaning "sometimes."
Origin of inchmeal
1inch + -meal (as in piecemeal)
First Known Use: 1530
Rhymes with inchmeal
aiguille, all-wheel, anneal, appeal, big deal, big wheel, bilge keel, bonemeal, bonspiel, cam wheel, Castile, cartwheel, chainwheel, chenille, cogwheel, conceal, congeal, cornmeal, done deal, eared seal, enwheel, fifth wheel, fish meal, flywheel, forefeel, for real, four-wheel, freewheel, fur seal, genteel, get real, good deal, great seal, handwheel, harp seal, ideal, mild steel, mill wheel, misdeal, mobile, Mobile, monk seal, mouthfeel, New Deal, newsreel, nosewheel, oatmeal, O'Neal, pastille, piecemeal, pinwheel, prayer wheel, raw deal, repeal, reveal, schlemiel, self-heal, side-wheel, singspiel, somedeal, spike heel, stabile, tahsil, Tar Heel, thumbwheel, unreel, unseal, worm wheel
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Thesaurus: All synonyms and antonyms for "inchmeal"
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