Dictionary
Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.
turn a hair en · VERB
Pronunciation
Meanings
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(idiomatic, in the negative) To show fear, alarm or distress; to be affected (by an experience or situation).
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.
1891, Oscar Wilde, “chapter 12”, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, London; New York, N.Y.: Ward Lock & Co., →OCLC:[…] those seasoned topers who drank their companions under the table without themselves turning a hair […]
1917, Henry Handel Richardson, Australia Felix, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Part IV, Chapter 9, p. 435:[…] 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.
1952, Neville Shute, The Far Country, London: Heinemann, Chapter:
Forms
Relateds
to the turn of a hair · bat an eyelid