Citations:piecemeal

Adverb: piece by piece

 * 1726 -, Gulliver's Travels, book II, part 3
 * Some of them seized my cake, and carried it piecemeal away; others flew about my head and face, confounding me with the noise, and putting me in the utmost terror of their stings.
 * 1816 -, Darkness
 * Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea, And their masts fell down piecemeal
 * 1819 -, The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Preface
 * The following papers, with two exceptions, were written in England, and formed but part of an intended series for which I had made notes and memorandums. Before I could mature a plan, however, circumstances compelled me to send them piecemeal to the United States, where they were published from time to time in portions or numbers.
 * 1847 -, Omoo, chapter LXII
 * Before we left the shed, the old fellow toppled the whole concern over, and dragged it away piecemeal.
 * 1909 -, The Lady of the Shroud, book IX
 * ...when Greece was almost a byword, and when Albania as a nation--though still nominally subject--was of such unimpaired virility that there were great possibilities of her future, it was imperative that something must happen if the Balkan race was not to be devoured piecemeal by her northern neighbours.
 * 1914 - Saki, The Forbidden Buzzards
 * It's as bad as selling a man a horse with half a dozen latent vices and watching him discover them piecemeal in the course of the hunting season.

Adverb: into pieces or parts

 * 1849 - The Mabinogion, The Dream of Rhonabwy, translated by Lady Charlotte Guest from the anonymous medieval manuscript
 * And when they had played awhile, they heard a mighty tumult, and a wailing of men, and a croaking of Ravens, as they carried the men in their strength into the air, and, tearing them betwixt them, let them fall piecemeal to the earth.
 * 1888 -  The Whitehall Murder, Daily Telegraph (London), October 03
 * A few years ago also there was the case of Kate Webster, who at Richmond murdered her mistress, and, fiend-like, cut the body up piecemeal, and tried to dispose of it in various ways by small portions.

Adjective: made or done in pieces

 * 1821 - John Taylor of Caroline, Tyranny Unmasked, section III
 * We may obtain a correct idea of the piecemeal mode of destroying theoretical liberty, by supposing that the first Congress under the present constitution, had published a declaration in the following words.
 * 1947 - George Marshall, The Marshall Plan Speech
 * Such assistance, I am convinced, must not be on a piecemeal basis, as various crises develop.
 * 1965 - Hugh M. Cole, The Ardennes: Battle of the Bulge, chapter XX
 * Patton replied that he could start a piecemeal attack in three days, a co-ordinated attack in six.