I went to use the phrase “eke toward” today, in the sense of “very gradually but increasingly move toward”. I thought this was cromulent, because I’ve heard & used it occasionally in the past. But I could only find it attested pretty rarely online—e.g.:
“Eking towards the door…” — Dave Webb, 2019
“As we eek towards [sic?] 15k subscribers…” — Reddit user gergo_v, 2019
“I focused on the asphalt shaking under me so I wouldn’t have to watch my house barely eking toward me from the end of the road.” — The Pain Eater, 2018
“We’re slowly eking toward the healthy side of the business ledger” — Night Hawk, 2015
“Quarterbacks keep throwing interceptions for Arizona and we might eek toward [sic?] #FreeWerlinger territory.” — Zack Rosenblatt, 2015
“I stand facing him, with his fingers, hand and arm eking towards me.” — Broken Bones, 2011
“…I’ve found myself eking toward a fence-sitting position about Twitter…” — J. C. Hutchins, 2010
“Hoyt’s blood was cool now, and eking toward cold.” — Morrigan’s Cross, 2006
“Many, very many, are the sons of St. David who wear the leek to distinguish from enemies; but it is the heart’s leek eking toward the pure and hallowed paths of religion and knowledge.” — The Opal: A Monthly Periodical of the State Lunatic Asylum, Vol. 8, 1858
Notably, most of these citations are recent, so I thought this form might be a recent development. But there is that one citation from the mid-1800s that made me think it might be older, and just rare enough that it’s not well documented, or not trivial to search for. There aren’t any attestations in Google Ngrams, or there are so few that it falls below the searchable threshold.
So my question is: is this a new form, derived from “eke out (a living)” after it became solidified as a set phrase? Or is it an old form, albeit rare, from Early Modern English or Middle English, when “eke” was still a productive verb with the sense of “increasing”, “growing”, or “stretching”? (From which we get the set phrase “eke out”, i.e., to stretch your meager means to last longer.)