one by one

Questions about one by one

What does one by one mean?

one by one means "in succession". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

What is another word for one by one?

Close synonyms include one at a time, by the piece, individually, separately, singly. 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 one by one a common word?

one by one is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.