Word.ws English Dictionary

half-inch

half-inch verb: to pinch, to steal. Also the alternative form of half inch.

Verb

half-inch (third-person singular simple present half-inches, present participle half-inching, simple past and past participle half-inched)

  1. (Cockney, slang, transitive) To pinch, to steal.
    • No cox'n will ever be hanged; he will always have "half-inched" the rope from the hangman first.1942 December 9, “Rope”, in Punch, page 501

Also used as

half-inch is also the alternative form of half inch.

Forms of half-inch

Verb
third-person singular presenthalf-inches
present participlehalf-inching
past participlehalf-inched
pasthalf-inched
Noun
pluralhalf-inches

Questions about half-inch

What does half-inch mean?
Half-inch means to pinch, to steal.
What part of speech is half-inch?
Half-inch is a verb.
What is the past tense of half-inch?
The past tense of half-inch is half-inched.

Words near half-inch in the dictionary

  1. half-human
  2. half-humans
  3. half-hunter
  4. half-hunters
  5. half-identical
  6. half-inch
  7. half-inched
  8. half-inches
  9. half-inching
  10. half-integer
  11. half-integers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: half-inch (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “half-inch.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/half-inch. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.