turn a hair

turn a hair

1. (idiomatic, in the negative) To show fear, alarm or distress; to be affected (by an experience or situation).
   • 1890, Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, July 1890, Chapter 12, p. 90,

     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.

   • 1917, Henry Handel Richardson, Australia Felix, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., Part IV, Chapter 9, p. 435,

     […] those seasoned topers who drank their companions under the table without themselves turning a hair […]

   • 1952, Neville Shute, The Far Country, London: Heinemann, Chapter ,

     […] 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.

• bat an eyelid

• Arthurian