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
It was otherwise indeed; for when I looked abroad, I perceived I had escaped destruction by a hand’s-breadth.
From The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) by Stevenson, Robert Louis
The men wear wide linen trousers, and over them a shirt confined round the waist by a girdle, with a sleeveless woollen jacket made of stuff of only a hand's-breadth, sewed together.
From Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century by Adams, W. H. Davenport
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.
