Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. used, by metonymy, to describe the penis; a specific size is usu. appended; thus —incher n., a penis of a specified size.

1614		Jonson Bartholomew Fair I iii: Thou must visit ’hem, as thou wouldst do a tomb, with a torch, or three handfuls of link, flaming hot, and so thou mayst hap to make ’em feel thee, and after, come to inherit according to thy inches.
1696		Motteux (trans.) Gargantua and Pantagruel (1927) II Bk IV 258: A fine and eleven Inch long Branch of red Coral, for her Christmas-Box.
1732		Ladies Delight 3: Six Inches good and fit for Use [...] And oft’ does nine full Inches ride.
1765		H. Howard Choice Spirits Museum 33: Never stand for an Inch, quoth the Fair, you are right, Sir, Now bait well your Hook, and throw in with a Glee.
1789		Burns ‘Come rede me, dame’ in Works (1842) 352: Her wanton tail sae ready – / I learned a sang in Annandale / Nine inch will please a lady.
1792		C. Dibdin ‘All for the Chink’ Buck’s Delight 28: Who’d refuse a lad of my inches, / So sprightly, fightly, near, complete?
c.1800		‘Tweedmouth Town’ in Burns Merry Muses of Caledonia (1965) 195: Nine northern lads with their Scots plaid [...] All nine-inch men, to a bousing came.
1832		Satirist (London) 3 June 181/3: The Earl replied, ‘You have taken an I [i.e ‘ell’, 18 inches] too much, my dear.’ ‘And yet,’ added Maria, ‘I have not received an inch too much..‘ [...] the Earl coughed [...] and neither rose nor spoke again the whole evening.
1837		‘Blue Bells of Ireland’ Ri-tum Ti-tum Songster 3: Desiring that she might have one nine inches long.
1837		‘I’ll Never Do So Any More’ Ticklish Minstrel 11: I’ll have his ten inches.
1842		‘Nancy Dawson’ in Nancy Dawson’s Cabinet of Songs 10: The tall black cook with her made free [...] He gave her inches twenty-three.
1890		‘Neaniskos’ Priapeia Ep. x 12: Thrust into by my twelve-inch pole, thou shalt be so stretched that thou wilt think thy anus never had any wrinkles.
1903		in J. Weeks ‘Inverts, Perverts, and Mary-Annes’ in Journal Homosexuality (1980/81) 6 119: Dusky depradator huge, saw 7 in. in all .
1914		T.S. Eliot ‘Fragments’ Inventions of the March Hare in Ricks (1996) 314: There was a jolly tinker came across the sea / With his four and twenty inches hanging to his knee .
1936		J.T. Farrell World I Never Made 443: It made him kind of wish that some guy would grab her [...] and give her five or six inches of what her dude husband probably didn’t have to give her.
1947–53		W. Guthrie Seeds of Man (1995) 250: I got a little seven-inch grapey vine that’ll make ya laugh, an’ grunt lots better th’n that.
1965		K. Marlowe Mr Madam (1967) 57: One person had written: ‘I have ten inches’.
1978		S. King Stand (1990) 157: You can munch my nine-inch hogleg, how’s that? Whoop!
1995		D. Lodge Therapy (1996) 27: He’s certainly got the tackle. I saw him in the showers the other day. It must be a ten-incher.

2. £10.00.

1866

Sportsman 4 Sept. 2/1: Notes on News [...] ‘You know perfectly well what I mean; is it an inch and a half or two inches?’ [...] Two inches meant 20l. and in inch and a half 15l.