turn a hair

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

Verb

turn a hair (third-person singular simple present turns a hair, present participle turning a hair, simple past and past participle turned a hair)

1. (idiomatic, in the negative) To show fear, alarm or distress; to be affected (by an experience or situation).
   • 1891, Oscar Wilde, “chapter 12”, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, London, New York, N.Y., Melbourne, Vic.: Ward Lock & Co., →OCLC:

     If in some hideous dissecting-room or fetid laboratory you found this man lying on a leaden table with red gutters scooped out in it, you would simply look upon him as an admirable subject. You would not turn a hair.

   • 1917, Henry Handel Richardson, Australia Felix‎^[1], New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Part IV, Chapter 9, p. 435:

     […] those seasoned topers who drank their companions under the table without themselves turning a hair […]

   • 1952, Neville Shute, The Far Country‎^[2], London: Heinemann, Chapter:

     […] they all went into a shop that Jennifer alone would never have dreamed of entering, and looked at watches; finally Jane bought a gold self-winding wrist-watch for her husband for ninety-two guineas, and never turned a hair.

See also

• bat an eyelid
• to the turn of a hair

Anagrams

• Arthurian