by the piece

1. 1.

   one piece at a time

   “she sold the plates by the piece”

   Synonymsone by one

Questions about by the piece

What does by the piece mean?

by the piece means "one piece at a time".

What is another word for by the piece?

Close synonyms include one by one. 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 the piece a common word?

by the piece 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.