cat's whisker

American  

noun

1. cat whisker.

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cat's whisker British  

noun

1. a pointed wire used to make contact with the crystal in a crystal radio receiver

2. any wire used to make contact with a semiconductor

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Etymology

Origin of cat's whisker

First recorded in 1910–15

Example Sentences

Austria's Alessandro Haemmerle wins gold "by a cat's whisker" after a dramatic photo finish in the men's snowboard cross final.

From BBC

“This is a woman who is waiting on unemployment benefits, she has a 5-month-old kid, and she did everything she was supposed to do and she only escaped eviction by a cat’s whisker,” he said later.

From Washington Post

However the following day he told her she had "escaped immediate custody by a cat's whisker".

From BBC

As president, he kept the number “118,573” tucked in his suit pocket, to remind him of the cat’s whisker margin of his popular-vote victory and the need to keep his campaign promise.

From The Wall Street Journal

Shouldn’t we expect all our elected representatives to be so conversant with the scientific issues of the day that explanations of quantum computing by any one of them should barely twitch a cat’s whisker?

From Nature