bit by bit
advEtymology From bit + by + bit. Compare West Frisian bytsje by bytsje (“bit by bit”), Dutch beetje bij beetje (“bit by bit”).
1
Idiomatic 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 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:
- 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 journey's end.2020 June 3, Andrew Mourant, “A safer railway in a greener habitat”, in Rail, page 58:
1 more example
- 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, →ISBN, page 23: