hand's-breadth
Britishnoun
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“Every little pebble was distinct, every speckled trout, every hand’s-breadth of sand,” Mark Twain wrote of his unimpeded glimpse into Lake Tahoe’s depths in “Roughing It.”
From New York Times ● Jan. 14, 2013
No eye can venture to compass more than a hand's-breadth.
From Time Magazine Archive
I have a bed which is about a hand's-breadth wide .
From Time Magazine Archive
With a hand's-breadth further flight, it would have fallen into the water, and have given the little brook another woe to carry onward, besides the unintelligible tale which it still kept murmuring about.
From The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Not a hand’s-breadth of pavement was to be seen, but only the heads of an eager struggling multitude.
From Romola by George Eliot
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
