From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishlittle by littlelittle by littleSLOWgradually Little by little he became accepted by the family. → little
Examples from the Corpus
little by little• Little by little I became more fluent in German.• Bingo broke me in and taught me the ropes, and little by little I became his boy.• But little by little he would piece it all together.• But time went on, and little by little I realized that this was not going to happen.• I run my fingers over this invisible object, and little by little curiosity gets the better of me.• Then little by little words are exchanged.• Then, little by little, step by step, their dreams grow with the size of their business.• These things, therefore, became little by little private property.• This proved difficult and Josef Vissarionovich had to be blown up little by little over a period of two weeks. 