hair's breadth

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Related to hair's breadth: hairbreadth

hair's breadth

A very small amount or short length. After wandering around the forest for an hour thinking we were lost, it turned out that we were only a hair's breadth away from our campsite. The seal is air-tight—there's not a hair's breadth between the door and the frame.

See also: breadth

a hair's breadth

1. You use a hair's breadth to talk about the smallest possible amount or degree of something. The town suffered heavy bombing, coming within a hair's breadth of being destroyed altogether. He missed the two-minute barrier by a hair's breadth, finishing in 2.00.04 and setting a new British record. The situation was a hair's breadth away from being comical.

2. You use a hair's breadth to talk about the smallest possible distance. A stone flew past him, missing him by a hair's breadth. His head was a hair's breadth away from the car roof.

See also: breadth

Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2012

a hair's breadth

a very small amount or margin.

See also: breadth

Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary © Farlex 2017

a ˈhair’s breadth

a very small distance or amount: He escaped death by a hair’s breadth. If the other car had been going any faster, he would certainly have been killed. ♢ She was within a hair’s breadth of winning.

Breadth means width.

See also: breadth

Farlex Partner Idioms Dictionary © Farlex 2017

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References in periodicals archive ?

"You have come within a hair's breadth of going straight to prison today."

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Recorder Simon Phillips, at Durham Crown Court, told Elliott he had escaped a prison term by a "hair's breadth" because he had suffered depression for nearly a decade.

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Even superstar players are always a hair's breadth away from a trade.

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Izindaba's Chris Bateman, fascinated by Pillay's unusual boldness in a climate where administrative chiefs tend to keep their heads down and leave the politicians to make excuses, reports on how he came within a hair's breadth of resigning in early June this year, functionally emasculated by politicians who contributed to the disenchantment of the Pretoria supplementary clean-up squad.

E Cape: rock the boat, walk the plank?

Subash scraped by a hair's breadth before snatching victory from the jaws of defeat to register a 7-6 (7-3) 6-7 (5-7), 13-11 victory over Anirudh Sriram.

Subash survives Anirudh scare

Working on the nanoscale, which is 80,000 times smaller than a hair's breadth, the team have woven threads of atoms into the shape of five-point stars, creating building blocks of materials which are flexible and potentially shock absorbent.

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That season he won the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud and Prix Foy and was beaten a hair's breadth into second in both the Dubai Sheema Classic and Hong Kong Vase.

French National Stud lands Spanish Moon

There was a hair's breadth between the duo at the end of Q2, but come the conclusion to the top-10 shoot-out, Vettel blew everybody away.

Vettell in the driving seat; Sport in Brief

Ninety-five of these are considered "near Earth asteroids" meaning they are 30 million miles away, almost a third of the way to the Sun, yet a hair's breadth in terms of the size of our solar system, reports Discovery News.

Astronomers discover 95 'near-Earth' asteroids

Together, the lost ice is raising sea levels annually by a tiny fraction - about a hair's breadth spread evenly around the world's oceans.

How 1.5m icebergs are melting away every year

The Thandis can be made to build the hotel right down to a hair's breadth and that is what the public want and that is what the council is paid to do.

Enforcing the rules; Mailbag

I want you to leave this courtroom knowing you have come within a hair's breadth of prison."

Woman, 79, kept 40 cats in squalid conditions despite animal ban

And it was only by a hair's breadth that Greenfield failed to beat teammate Hannah Rich for the national title.

Greenfield gets back on her bike to strike silver and gold

That proximity, of the disk is another indicator that the black hole is a whirling dervish, spinning so rapidly that outside material can orbit within a hair's breadth of ultimate doom.

A new spin: X-rays shed light on black holes

Meyer's description of the lovers' emotions is palpable, and readers will be drawn into the couple's spiraling dance, feeling the intense longing that comes from being a hair's breadth away from the thing you want most in the world.