neither hide nor hair

No trace or evidence of someone or something. I don't know where Mike went. I've seen neither hide nor hair of him all day.

*(neither) hide nor hair

Cliché no sign or indication of someone or something. (*Typically: find ~; see ~.) We could find neither hide nor hair of him. I don't know where he is. There has been no one here. We found neither hide nor hair.

hide nor hair, neither

Also, hide or hair. No trace of something lost or missing. For example, I haven't seen hide nor hair of the children. This expression alludes to the entire outer coat of an animal. [Mid-1800s]

neither hide nor hair of someone

not the slightest trace of someone.

See also: hair, hide, neither, nor, of, someone

Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary © Farlex 2017

hide nor hair

A trace; a vestige: haven't seen hide nor hair of them since the argument.

neither hide nor hair

Nothing; no part of something. The term, which dates from Chaucer’s time, alludes to the fact that the outside of an animal is made up of hide and hair, which therefore constitute its entirety. The negative version, nearly always meaning that something or someone cannot be seen or found, became common in the mid-nineteenth century. “I haven’t seen hide nor hair of the piece,” wrote Josiah G. Holland (The Bay-Path, 1857).

See also: hair, hide, neither, nor

See also:

References in classic literature

They left their horses, loaded and tied, and just disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving neither hide nor hair behind them.

View in context

Which is fair enough, because he's probably never heard of me, given I've seen neither hide nor hair of him since the general election.

Silver linings as the political storm clouds continue to gather

There is neither hide nor hair of an issue of even remote interest to broadcasters.

June Broadcast Snoozer at the FCC

It doesn't seem that Kelly continued her foray into television like some of her co-stars, as we could find neither hide nor hair of her.

Heads of the Valleys; FEATURE Pam Fi, Duw? was the Welsh-language soap which entertained schoolchildren in the late 1990s, but how many faces do you remember? Kathryn Williams dips into the 'where are they now' file

But, funny enough, in five years we saw neither hide nor hair of them.

CLEGG'S CLASS IN HYPOCRISY

I've seen neither hide nor hair of them for four weeks.

It's bin a long time

"We were promised we would be told the results of the investigation and we have heard neither hide nor hair," Johnson said.

Secrecy keeps victims, accused in the dark

Chicago's WBBM Channel 2 ran the story on May 14, and an APB was put out for Bear, but for three days neither hide nor hair was seen of him.

Lost & found

Though we saw neither hide nor hair of Chuck Dinkins or Fred Reeves, we ran into plenty of others including the one-time-egg-plant-challenged Donnie Griffin (now a father and mortgage broker), freestyle sensation Reggie Barnes (owner of Eastern Distribution), formerly sha-danked Ray Underhill (Eastern employee) and, most exciting, Atlanta's Tommy Kay (mustached Trashmore fan in Future Primitive who reminds his mother to "Keep the dead raccoon out of my truck, please!") We also ran into a kid claiming to be Jeff Hedges' cousin--an assertion so random it had to be true.

All trucks free of dead raccoons

One of the few forces which failed to arrest Steve was Yorkshire, in spite of the best efforts of the impressively-named Chief Inspector (Acting) Tadeusz Nowakowski, the Morse of the North, who saw neither hide nor hair of him.

Stotty On Sunday: BARING UP WELL

Since the triumphal detection of the neutrinos, however, astronomers have seen neither hide nor hair of the neutron star.

A supernova turns 10: birthday of an explosion