What is "hairbreadth"

Usage examples of "hairbreadth".

They told us of his perilous scouts and his hairbreadth escapes, of his wonderful audacity and still more wonderful success--of his capture of Towns with a handful of sailors, and the destruction of valuable stores, etc.

It swooped crabwise across the concrete, missed a dawdling phaeton by a hairbreadth, flashed between two other gyrocars, wiped the fender off a dancing four-wheeler and slammed into the side.

Its sidewalks were blocked by parked cars and he had to walk in the middle of the street, jumping aside every minute or so for gleaming motorized bicycles ridden by young mobsters taking fierce pleasure in revving their engines and missing the pedestrians by a hairbreadth.

If you have ever seen a bird chasing a butterfly, and if you can imagine a more than gigantic bird chasing two perfectly insignificant butterflies among white mountains, then you can just begin to imagine the twistings, dodgings, hairbreadth escapes, and the wild zigzag rush of that flight home.

Steadily he increased the pressure, staring hard at his aiming point on the throat, resisting any impulse to jerk the trigger that final hairbreadth.

And, if an agent had been captured and was being forced to contact London under torture, he had only to add a few hairbreadth peculiarities to his usual 'fist' and they would tell the story of his capture as clearly as if he had announced it en clair.

Whether he could write, I don't know, but he read from that novel-and it was about himself, full of lurid adventures in which he triumphed over hordes of savages, killed grizzly bears with his Bowie, and had hairbreadth escapes from forest fires and blizzards and heaven knows what.