I think I might have found a typo in dictionary.com. I was looking for some background on the sword of Damocles, and it referenced the similar expressions "hang by a thread" but also "hand by a hair." This wouldn't be such a big deal if it weren't repeated several times in the definition and links to it, not to mention picked up by a couple dozen mirror dictionaries (the only google results for the phrase)

The main reason I mention this: Should the d in "hand" be a g or is this just something I've never heard of?

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=hand%20by%20a%20hair

Boy, I have never heard of this, either. While, it wasn't in Onelook, I also found it in HyperDic...or is HyperDic a "mirror dictionary?" I was surprised that Onelook didn't pick it up since they do have Dictionary.com as one of their sources.

It surely seems to me that it should be "hang by a hair." How about the rest of you?

I wonder if this was something scanned in, and the OCR program made a mistake. Certainly the proof-readers (a vanishing breed?) should have picked it up.

It's interesting that when some respected site, like Dictionary.com, gets something wrong, suddenly lots of other sites are filled with the same error. I know there is a word for the misspellings or misquotes that appear in Google because we have posted about it; I can't seem to remember it right now.