By the hair of his teeth

On election night (11/21), MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki, the election guru, was talking about a candidate’s narrow victory.  He said that the guy was ahead at that point, “by the hair of his teeth.”  This is a nice congruent conflation of “by a hair” and “by the skin of (one’s) teeth”, both meaning just barely or very narrowly. This one has variations that I have posted previously, e.g. https://malaphors.com/2018/02/17/by-the-nick-of-their-teeth/ and https://malaphors.com/2014/10/23/i-got-by-by-the-squeak-of-my-teeth/.

Hats off to Martin Pietrucha for sending this one and to his wife Melinda for hearing it!