inchmeal

“While facts remain to be proved, lawsuits like this highlight young people’s despair with the drawn-out pace of the unhurried, inchmeal, bureaucratic response to our most dire emergency,” she wrote in her decision late last week.

We are making inchmeal progress across the gritty surface of the Red Planet heading toward a distant crater.

But in the 1,300 years since the sword of the Prophet first flashed in the hot desert sun of Arabia, most advances in the freedom of Moslem women have been painful and inchmeal.

He could be as patient as Death, that inchmeal stalker of his prey; he could be as ruthless as the sea, and incredibly generous upon occasion.

Torture me inchmeal!—to the last I'll smile, And bless him for his mercy!—but spare, oh spare my children!