by small degrees

1. 1.

   by a short distance

   “they moved it by inches”

   Synonymsby incheslittle by little

Questions about by small degrees

What does by small degrees mean?

by small degrees means "by a short distance".

What is another word for by small degrees?

Close synonyms include by inches, little by little. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is by small degrees a common word?

by small degrees is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.