hair's-breath

It missed him by a hair's-breath.

It was a most undignified position; but he triumphed over it, as, with one supple undulation, he shot himself on to the floor, saving his forehead from the window by a hair's-breath.

His satisfaction was hardly diminished by a hair's-breath when Cedric suggested that they might go round by Rotherwood on their way home and give David a verbal invitation.