Other forms: inches, inched
An inch is a small unit of length, about the width of a thumb. Twelve of them make a foot.
Britain officially went metric decades ago and still measures people, televisions and rainfall in inches, which is why the unit refuses to die. It is exactly 2.54 centimetres. The word works as a verb meaning to move very slowly and slightly, as in inching forward in traffic. English gives it two good idioms: giving somebody an inch and having them take a mile, and inch by inch, meaning very gradually.
1nouninchA unit of length equal to one twelfth of a foot.
“The shelf was an inch too wide.”
2verbmoveTo move slowly and by small amounts.
“The queue inched towards the door.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Proto-Indo-European
*óynos — one
Latin
uncia — Roman inch, various similar units
Old English
ynċe
Middle English
ynche
English, today
inch
From Middle English ynche, enche, from Old English ynċe, borrowed from Latin uncia (“Roman inch, various similar units”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European óynos (“one”). a doublet of ounce and uncia and onça and onza and oka and ouguiya and awqiyyah.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA