inch vs needle

inch

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

  • To drive by inches, or small degrees. 

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

  • To deal out by inches; to give sparingly. 

adj
  • cocky and cheeky 

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. 

needle

verb
  • To tease in order to provoke; to poke fun at. 

  • To form, or be formed, in the shape of a needle. 

  • To pierce with a needle, especially for sewing or acupuncture. 

noun
  • A needle-like leaf found on some conifers. 

  • Any slender, pointed object resembling a needle, such as a pointed crystal, a sharp pinnacle of rock, an obelisk, etc. 

  • A strong beam resting on props, used as a temporary support during building repairs. 

  • A sensor for playing phonograph records, a phonograph stylus. 

  • A text string that is searched for within another string. (see: needle in a haystack) 

  • A fine measurement indicator on a dial or graph. 

  • A long, thin, sharp implement usually for piercing as in sewing, embroidery, acupuncture, tattooing, body piercing, medical injections, sutures, etc; or a blunt but otherwise similar implement used for forming loops or knots in crafts such as darning, knitting, tatting, etc. 

  • The death penalty carried out by lethal injection. 

  • Any of various species of damselfly of the genus Synlestes, endemic to Australia. 

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