Word.ws English Dictionary

hair's breadth

hair's breadth noun: a very small amount or distance.

Noun

hair's breadth (plural hairs' breadths)

  1. (idiomatic) A very small amount or distance.
    • hair's-breadth escapes [narrow escapes]
    • We won by a hair's breadth.

Examples of hair's breadth in a sentence

  • He missed me by a hair's breadth when he ran past me yesterday.
  • They came within a hair's breadth of contacting electrified water.
  • Measure Maddalena, and measure Minerva, and, from forehead to chin, you won't find a hair's breadth of difference between them.1856, [William] Wilkie Collins, “The Yellow Mask”, in After Dark, volume II, London: Smith, Elder & Co., →OCLC, page 163:
  • "And then at last I see him, and behold, my chance is gone but by a hair's breadth even before I have it, for he is in the very jaws of death, whence no power of mine can draw him."1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:

Forms of hair's breadth

pluralhairs' breadths
alternative formhairsbreadth
alternative formhairbreadth

Words formed from hair's breadth

Questions about hair's breadth

What does hair's breadth mean?
Hair's breadth means a very small amount or distance.
How do you use hair's breadth in a sentence?
He missed me by a hair's breadth when he ran past me yesterday.
What part of speech is hair's breadth?
Hair's breadth is a noun.
What is the plural of hair's breadth?
The plural of hair's breadth is hairs' breadths.

Words near hair's breadth in the dictionary

  1. hair twist
  2. hair twists
  3. hair up
  4. hair wax
  5. hair waxes
  6. hair's breadth
  7. HAIR-AN
  8. HAIR-AN syndrome
  9. HAIR-AN syndromes
  10. hair-bowed
  11. hair-brown

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hair's breadth (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-a hair's breadth.ogg.

Cite this entry: “hair's breadth.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hair%27s_breadth. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.