Reference > Brewer’s Dictionary > Hair-breadth ’Scape.

 Hair-brained.Hair Eels. 
CONTENTS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
E. Cobham Brewer 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.
 
Hair-breadth ’Scape.
 
A very narrow escape from some evil. In measurement the forty-eighth part of an inch is called a “hair-breadth.”   1
       
“Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents by flood and field,
Of hair-breadth ’scapes i th’ imminent deadly breach.”
       
Shakespeare: Othello, i. 3.
 


 Hair-brained.Hair Eels. 

 
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