Meal time

Some people love a new car, a new restaurant, a new mixed drink. I love a new word, or, at least, a word new to me. 

Peggy read to me from a magazine article and the quote contained the word "inchmeal." I figured it meant "a little at a time, progressing inch by inch" because of the "meal" suffix, as in piecemeal.

Having nothing better to do, I looked up "meal," and not the five-piece fried chicken meal at Popeyes. No, this sort of "meal" comes to us from Old English and Middle English, and means a way to "denote a fixed number, measure, or amount at a time."  There's also "wordmeal," which is how we read certain people's public writings - one word at a time. 

It would have been good to know "inchmeal" back in the days when the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration offices were bottlenecks that kept us hostage on hard tubular steel seats as you waited to be waited upon. You'd be there for hours, making inchmeal progress! But some smart cookie decided to run the place on an appointment basis now. We had business in there last week, and we were in and out in no time at all. 

We had time to pick up a  chicken dinner on the way home! We ate it piecemeal.