word by word
One at a time
Word by word describes doing something one word at a time, with careful attention to each individual word in sequence.
It often suggests painstaking precision or literal exactness: The editor went through the manuscript word by word.
A word-by-word translation follows the original text exactly, preserving each word's meaning rather than capturing the overall sense more freely.
The phrase can also describe how someone learns to read or how a text is analyzed in close study.
- literacyAbility to read, write
- reading aloudSpeaking text for listeners
- copyeditingCorrecting written material
- parsingGrammatical structure extraction
- lexemeFundamental dictionary unit
morpheme · phonics · decoding · comprehension · flash cards · vocabulary building · etymology · phoneme · polysemy · verbatim · line by line · text analysis · denotation · morphology · idiom · foreign language · rote learning · slow and steady
- gradual phrasesbit by bit, little by little, step by step, one by one, piece by piece
- reading skillsvocabulary, literacy skills, decoding, grammar, fluency
word by wordskimming
Passing lightly over
scanning · speed reading · at a glance · cursorily · superficially
word by wordfreely
Without restriction or hindrance
loosely · in spirit · idiomatically · liberally · interpretively
word, words, worded, wording, wordless, wordsmith, byword, watchword, wordplay