inch vs lag

inch

verb
  • To advance very slowly, or by a small amount (in a particular direction). 

  • To drive by inches, or small degrees. 

  • To deal out by inches; to give sparingly. 

  • to humiliate; to provoke; to speak in a cocky and cheeky manner 

noun
  • A depth of one inch on the ground, used as a measurement of rainfall. 

  • A small island; an islet. 

  • A meadow, pasture, field, or haugh. 

  • Any very short distance. 

  • A depth of one inch in a glass, used as a rough measurement of alcoholic beverages. 

  • An English unit of length equal to 1/12 of a foot or 2.54 cm, roughly the width of a thumb. 

  • Any of various similar units of length in other traditional systems of measurement. 

adj
  • cocky and cheeky 

lag

verb
  • To respond slowly. 

  • To fail to keep up (the pace), to fall behind. 

  • To cause to lag; to slacken. 

  • To cover (for example, pipes) with felt strips or similar material (referring to a time lag effect in thermal transfer). 

adj
  • Late. 

  • Last made; hence, made of refuse; inferior. 

noun
  • A method of deciding which player shall start. Both players simultaneously strike a cue ball from the baulk line to hit the top cushion and rebound down the table; the player whose ball finishes closest to the baulk cushion wins. 

  • A stave of a cask, drum, etc.; especially (engineering) one of the narrow boards or staves forming the covering of a cylindrical object, such as a boiler, or the cylinder of a carding machine or steam engine. 

  • A gap, a delay; an interval created by something not keeping up; a latency. 

  • Delay; latency. 

  • One who lags; that which comes in last. 

  • A bird, the greylag. 

  • The fag-end; the rump; hence, the lowest class. 

  • A prisoner, a criminal. 

How often have the words inch and lag occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )