fine line

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fine line (plural fine lines)

1. (idiomatic) A difference, albeit vague and difficult to discern.

   Antonym: bright line

   • 1991, Steven Wright, Hysteria:

     There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.

   • 2005 June 20, Steve Rose, quoting Terry Hill, “The men continuing Ove Arup's architectural vision”, in The Guardian‎:

     "We're not arrogant, we're confident about what we're doing," says Hill, "But there's a fine line between them, isn't there?"

   • 2008 May 16, Katie Allen, “A fine line”, in The Guardian‎:

     San Francisco songsters The Richter Scales give the world their take on the subprime meltdown in a song that advises there's also a fine line "between the theories and the facts", "between what's solid and what cracks" and "between a gain and a crippling, crushing, mortally wounding decline".

   • 2023 January 13, Nick Haramis, “When Did We All Become Pop Culture Detectives?”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     Harvesting Easter eggs is now integral to our consumption of entertainment. But there’s a fine line between perceptiveness and paranoia.

• walk a fine line

• gray area