inch vs thou

inch

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

  • 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. 

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

verb
  • 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. 

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

adj
  • cocky and cheeky 

thou

noun
  • A unit of length equal to one-thousandth of an inch (25.4 µm). 

  • A thousand, especially a thousand of some currency (dollars, pounds sterling, etc.). 

verb
  • To use the word thou. 

  • To address (a person) using the pronoun thou, especially as an expression of contempt or familiarity. 

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