How to Use piecemeal in a Sentence

piecemeal

1 of 2 adverb
  • Many are built piecemeal throughout the life of a mine.
    Warren Cornwall, Science | AAAS, 20 Aug. 2020
  • The new wheel will be made off-site then shipped piecemeal to Cincinnati.
    Scott Wartman, Cincinnati.com, 18 Feb. 2020
  • The rest of it remains scattered piecemeal in public schools across the city.
    Aimee Levitt, Chicago Reader, 23 Mar. 2018
  • If not, they could be auctioned piecemeal for cents on the dollar.
    Matt Wirz, WSJ, 10 Mar. 2023
  • Not all of the jewelry would be broken down and sold piecemeal.
    Los Angeles Times, 20 Oct. 2022
  • It was worked piecemeal and couldn’t be held in my brain in its entirety.
    David Means, Harper's magazine, 10 Apr. 2019
  • Thousands of pounds of the Brenham meteorite have been pulled from the fields piecemeal.
    Nathaniel Scharping, Discover Magazine, 4 Apr. 2018
  • Tackle the whole thing, or take it on piecemeal by planning a trip for one of the sections below.
    Megan Michelson, Outside Online, 17 Apr. 2019
  • But efforts are under way to change that, even if progress has been piecemeal.
    Melissa Korn, WSJ, 8 Apr. 2017
  • Only if no one bites on the collection as a whole will it be sold piecemeal.
    Mark Pratt, USA TODAY, 14 Jan. 2020
  • The New Deal and the Great Society were both passed piecemeal over several years.
    Washington Post, 2 Oct. 2021
  • Martin, the 47th Ward alderman, said the city’s approach to bike safety has been piecemeal over the years.
    Sarah Freishtat, Chicago Tribune, 15 June 2022
  • Even eating it piecemeal, this was a five-napkin project.
    al, 27 May 2022
  • Around April 15 there's going to be a huge burst of those stories, even though most of us pay our taxes piecemeal all through the year.
    Robert Goulder, Forbes, 13 Apr. 2022
  • The answers have been emerging piecemeal to me – laying there as pieces in a puzzle.
    Jordan A. Rothacker, SPIN, 31 Dec. 2022
  • The question in the case was whether the government had to provide all of the information at once or could do so piecemeal.
    BostonGlobe.com, 29 Apr. 2021
  • And the White House has released information piecemeal rather than all at once.
    Brian Bennett, Time, 20 Jan. 2023
  • The money is expected to be drawn down piecemeal, with an initial amount of $10 million coming into the city by the end of the month, White said.
    Jeff Adelson, NOLA.com, 6 Sep. 2020
  • Those games all have to be squeezed into the schedule somewhere, and the Astros-Yankees games are being done piecemeal.
    Matt Young, Chron, 30 June 2022
  • Since its start in 2013, the pilot program has held workshops and brought in speakers, but the effort had been piecemeal, Harris said.
    Wendy Fawthrop, Orange County Register, 3 May 2017
  • Instead of buying all your tools piecemeal over the years, smart homeowners might buy tool sets and multi-use tools that take care of a wide range of tasks.
    Maren Estrada, BGR, 14 June 2021
  • And, while expensive, these tokens can be bought in piecemeal, and the end result has a longevity that clothing doesn’t.
    Hannah Jackson, Vogue, 27 Sep. 2023
  • Rather than buying all these tools piecemeal over the years, smart homeowners buy tool sets and multi-use tools that take care of a wide range of duties.
    Maren Estrada, BGR, 12 Apr. 2021
  • The $1 billion jackpot prize is for winners who opt to take the full amount piecemeal over 29 annual payments.
    Margery A. Beck, Fortune, 31 Oct. 2022
  • To avoid feeling overwhelmed by this task, tackle it piecemeal, a room, closet, shelf, drawer at a time.
    Jane E. Brody, charlotteobserver, 27 June 2018
  • The campus science labs alone are home to millions of dollars of high-value equipment, which could be sold piecemeal.
    Gordon R. Friedman, OregonLive.com, 21 May 2017
  • Granted, that big $800 discount is served to you piecemeal as monthly bill credits.
    Antonio G. Di Benedetto, The Verge, 20 Mar. 2023
  • Mallards molt a whole new suit of feathers at once, while Mexican ducks appear to molt piecemeal.
    Brandon Loomis, The Arizona Republic, 30 Aug. 2023
  • This is what a savvy, and perhaps ruthless, tech company intent on cornering a market does, and has done ever since — press its advantage to snap up competing ideas or companies, wholesale, sometimes, but piecemeal too.
    Brian Merchant, Los Angeles Times, 5 Oct. 2023
  • So far, attempts to curtail the collection of users’ data has been piecemeal, largely driven by state-level laws and individual enforcement actions.
    WIRED, 1 Nov. 2023
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piecemeal

2 of 2 adjective
  • They've done piecemeal repairs in the past, but the bridge now needs major reconstruction.
  • Some people want the changes to be made all at once, but I think we should take a more piecemeal approach.
  • So this is- this is the first step in that sort of piecemeal approach.
    CBS News, 7 May 2023
  • But this piecemeal approach has not kept pace with the need.
    Arkansas Online, 26 Nov. 2021
  • What makes matters worse is that all the reforms have been piecemeal.
    Ananya Bhattacharya, Quartz, 18 Aug. 2021
  • But help is slow, piecemeal, and not close to the scale that would match the severity of the crises low-income countries face.
    Mark Suzman september 8, Foreign Affairs, 8 Sep. 2023
  • Take the piecemeal way in which the United States has doled out military support to Ukraine.
    Sam Greene, Foreign Affairs, 22 Sep. 2023
  • But those piecemeal moves have so far failed to reverse sentiment and lift the sector.
    Lingling Wei, WSJ, 14 Nov. 2022
  • The Texas country music singer-songwriter is back — in a piecemeal way.
    Dallas News, 23 Nov. 2022
  • Wu has proposed a more piecemeal approach to zoning changes.
    Andrew Brinker, BostonGlobe.com, 6 May 2023
  • That is the sort of piecemeal change the town could pursue, while not picking on residents of any one neighborhood, Pugh said.
    Brian Amaral, BostonGlobe.com, 22 July 2022
  • The piecemeal construction will allow the public to enjoy the park before the full funding is secured.
    Sylvia Goodman, The Courier-Journal, 7 Aug. 2021
  • The recovery from the quake so far has been piecemeal and ad hoc — some restoration of schools, sidewalks and marketplaces and some light home repairs.
    Raja Abdulrahim Nicole Tung, New York Times, 27 Aug. 2023
  • Among the more imaginable steps would be a piecemeal sweep of assets by the government for cash to soften the blow for urban families.
    Anne Stevenson-Yang, Forbes, 24 Sep. 2021
  • Instead, they are expected to take a piecemeal approach.
    Brian Slodysko, ajc, 11 Aug. 2021
  • In the meantime, the industry is looking at piecemeal solutions.
    Mark Ellwood, Robb Report, 21 May 2022
  • The entire project will be completed at one time and during a five-year time frame instead of a piecemeal project that could extend for several decades.
    al, 22 Dec. 2021
  • Thousands of miles of trails and bikeways thread the Bay Area, but many of them exist in piecemeal form, with gaps and dead ends, rather than as segments of one flowing, cohesive system.
    Gregory Thomas, San Francisco Chronicle, 7 Mar. 2022
  • The short answer is because the U.S. continues to tackle this massive challenge with a piecemeal approach.
    Gordon Bitko, Forbes, 7 Oct. 2021
  • Instead of unveiling its lineup all at once, TIFF has favored a piecemeal approach this time.
    Brent Lang, Variety, 19 July 2022
  • But the forty-plus nations that acted as donors to the country created a piecemeal approach to development.
    Jane Ferguson, The New Yorker, 5 Jan. 2022
  • For the most part, however, Goldston’s video packages, as they are known in the TV industry, relied on the piecemeal accretion of small but telling details.
    Luke Broadwater Philip Montgomery, New York Times, 23 Dec. 2022
  • The odds are that AI is probably going to be more piecemeal and not one gigantic AI overlord (which is the usual portrayal).
    Lance Eliot, Forbes, 5 May 2022
  • The release follows a years-long legal battle and piecemeal disclosures.
    Emily St. Martin, Los Angeles Times, 4 Jan. 2024
  • Clay and Matthew Clark, our cinematographer, emulated a lot of those great shots of just the eyes and the hands and the piecemeal photography that leads up to all the posturing before the fight.
    Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 19 Nov. 2022
  • Taken together, these wins — Beyoncé’s only two of the night, ahead of her third Album of the Year loss — amount to piecemeal honors for one of her most holistic works.
    Vulture, 3 Feb. 2023
  • Courthouses throughout the state reopened to the public in piecemeal fashion after last year’s lockdown.
    Rafael Olmeda, sun-sentinel.com, 14 Aug. 2021
  • Indeed, the company has taken a piecemeal approach to bringing its high-end kitchen series to market.
    Demetrius Simms, Robb Report, 10 Sep. 2021
  • The problems of Palestinian governance need more than piecemeal reforms, new laws, or a yet another set of ministers.
    Raja Khalidi, Foreign Affairs, 19 Mar. 2024
  • Characters from the series’ ancillary media and spin-offs are woven into the story retroactively to create a master text from the piecemeal lore created by years of spin-offs, but not all of them work.
    Christopher Cruz, Rolling Stone, 22 Feb. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'piecemeal.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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