turn a hair

present singular third person turns a hair · participle present turning a hair · participle past turned a hair · past turned a hair

1. idiomaticTo show fear, alarm or distress; to be affected (by an experience or situation).

   […] 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

   2 more examples

   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

   […] 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