I was standing at a co-worker’s cube, when I glanced at a magazine. This is a very slick magazine put out by a vendor (that I’d never heard of, but that’s beside the point.)
On the cover was a picture of a Tour de France rider, and the caption read:
Winning the Tour de France by a “hairs-breadth” (sic)
AAARRGGGHHH! Two mistakes in one!
OK. . . I always thought it was hair’s breadth. Like, a hair is very narrow, and it’s breadth is just a wee little distance. “Hare’s” breadth? Like, the width of a bunny rabbit? In what manner does that make sense as an idiom?
Watch out, that could be beefcake!
A hare’s breadth is, of course, the width of the International Standard Rabbit, which is kept at the Jardin Zoologique de Paris, under the auspices of the Societé Internationale des Metaphores Betiales.
I agree with the argument that there should be an apostrophe, but I think the case for the quotation marks is arguable. Presumably the rider didn’t literally win by a hair’s-breadth, but by a much larger distance. In this case the quotes can be justified as emphasizing that a colloquialism is being used, not a literal measurement.