hairlinen.

1731 Philos. Trans. (Royal Soc.) 37 33 I took a Piece of a Hair-Line, such as Linnen-Cloaths are dried on.

1870 Blaine's Encycl. Rural Sports (rev. ed.) §2946 In..hair lines, each hair in every link should be equally big, round, and even.

1846 J. E. Worcester Universal Dict. Eng. Lang. Hair-line..a very slender line.

1870 R. W. Emerson Society & Solitude 141 A carpenter swings his axe to a hair-line on his log.

1884 Harper's Mag. Mar. 654/2 The first hair-line of this letter.

1888 in C. T. Jacobi Printers' Vocab.

1862 Catal. Internat. Exhib., Brit. II. No. 4104 Claret, drab, grey, and fancy hairlines.

1950 ‘Mercury’ Dict. Textile Terms 256/1 An imitation hairline fabric, woven from woollen warp and worsted weft.

1896 T. L. De Vinne in Moxon's Mech. Exerc.: Printing (new ed.) II. 415 No defined width is made for the thin-stroke, which is now called the hair-line.

1932 Paper & Print Dec. 326/2 Finely cut serifs, not the hair lines of Bodoni, but cut to a point, are characteristic of some of the latest types.

1970 W. P. Jaspert et al. Encycl. Type Faces (ed. 4) p. x All book types show some variation of thick and thin; in the fifteenth century it was slight, and gradually became more pronounced, until it reached the extreme in the nineteenth century when they became called hair lines.

1972 P. Gaskell New Introd. Bibliogr. 29 Didot's first neo-classic type did not show marked contrast, but later developments of the form, by Didot himself and by Bodoni in Italy, resulted by 1800 in faces of great contrast combined with vertical stress and unbracketed, hair-line serifs.

1922 S. Lewis Babbitt i. 8 A tremendous forehead, arching up two inches beyond the former hair-line.

1936 L. C. Douglas White Banners x. 225 The forward curve of the hair-line on the temples.

1959 A. Salkey Quality of Violence viii. 128 The rope round his neck was cutting into the hair-line at the back of his head.

1923 J. A. Jones Woolwich Res. Dept. Rep. no. 55 51 The occurrence of hair-line cracks at one end of the forgings suggests that trouble might be experienced.

1925 Jrnl. Iron & Steel Inst. 111 113 A defect known as snow-flakes or flakes (America), hair-cracks or hair-lines (Great Britain), Flocken (Germany), and cassures ligneuses (France), has received much attention among manufacturers and inspectors of alloy steel forgings.

1949 R. T. Rolfe Dict. Metallogr. (ed. 2) 121 Hair-line cracks (or hair c[racks]), (1) very fine short cracks occurring in the interior of some steel forgings which have not been allowed to cool sufficiently slowly from the working temperature... (2) The term is also applied to any fine cracks which may occur in metals and alloys.

1962 G. R. Bashforth Manuf. Iron & Steel IV. ii. 31 When once this [hydrogen-rich] constituent has been formed, its breakdown at low temperatures must result in the formation of hairline cracks, but hairline cracks will not be formed if the breakdown..is brought about at higher temperatures.

1968 Times 28 Aug. 21/6 The South of England Electricity Board has had to take its newest..power station..out of commission because of a discovery..of hair-line cracks in welding.

1935 Burlington Mag. Sept. 109/2 The hair-line sprays with delicate gold leaves.

1955 Sci. Amer. May 124/1 Its operation resembles that of a slide rule. You first position the hairline of the slider over the caret between the first four balls.

1960 Times 25 Oct. 15/5 He has recovered from a hairline fracture of the wrist.

1961 T. Landau Encycl. Librarianship (ed. 2) 160/1 Hair-line rule, a fine line of varying length used for division of text matter.

1962 Gloss. Terms Glass Ind. (B.S.I.) §72 Hair line, fine cord on the surface of glass.

1967 Gloss. Paper/Ink Terms for Letterpress Printing (B.S.I.) 12 Hair lines, fine filaments of foreign matter which forms barriers preventing the felting of many of the fibres and often leading to web breaks.

1940 F. S. Fitzgerald Let. 21 Sept. (1964) 124 I don't know how this job is going... Things depend on such hairlines here.

1959 New Statesman 29 Aug. 235/3 It is this hair-line compromise that Dr Stockwood has now challenged..in his statements, though not in his action, at Carshalton.

1962 Times 22 Mar. 3/3 It looked a hairline decision indeed.