in a piecemeal fashion• The charges against Sutyagin can, therefore, be established only in piecemeal fashion.• The cuckoo's adaptations were simply too perfect to have evolvedbit by bit, in piecemeal fashion.• To his disappointments it developed in a piecemeal fashion.• The process of drainage and enclosure was probably occurringin a piecemeal fashion all through the late Saxon period.• They may conceive of it in piecemeal fashion, recognising particular boundaries as and when it is unavoidably necessary to do so.
Originpiecemeal
(1200-1300)piece + -meal“by one part at a time”((11-19 centuries)) (from Old Englishmælum)