minute-by-minute

minute-by-minute — idiom

Idioms

minute-by-minute

idiom

giving details about something as each minute goes by, so you follow how it changes from one moment to the next.

The radio gave a minute-by-minute report of the storm as it moved toward the coast.

Naoko followed the minute-by-minute updates on the rescue as she waited by the phone.

minute-by-minute — phrasal verb

Etymology

LatinOld FrenchEnglish

Both phrases lean on 'minute', the noun for a sixty-second unit of time, which came into English through Old French from the Latin 'minutus', meaning 'small' or 'made smaller'. Repeating or stacking 'minute' in 'minute-by-minute' and 'by the minute' is a common English pattern for stressing that something is tracked or changing across very short, regular gaps of time.