skin

Pronunciation

• IPA: /skɪn/^[1]

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English skinn,^[2] borrowed from Old Norse skinn (“animal hide, fur”),^[3][2][4] from Proto-Germanic *skinþą,^[3][2] the source also of rare late Old English scinn,^[3][4] Middle High German schint “peel of a fruit” and German schinden “to flay”.^[3][2][5] Outside Germanic it is probably cognate with Old Irish ceinn “scale” and Breton scant “fish scale”,^[2][3] from Proto-Indo-European *sken- (“to peel off, flay”), an extended form of *sek- “to cut”.^[3] The usual Old English word was hide.^[3][6] The verb is from the noun.^[2][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

An animal hide or pelt, usually dressed: probably before 1200, in the Ormulum,^[2] about 1200.^[3][7] The skin of a living body is from probably before 1325^[2] or the early 14th century.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The word was extended to the skins of fruits and vegetables in the late 14th century.^[3] The verb first meant “to circumcise”, implied in 1392,^[2] and “to remove the skin from” from before 1400;^[2][3] “to cover with skin” is from the 1540s.^[3][7] In 19th-century American colloquial use skin meant “to fleece, plunder”, hence skin game (1868).^[3] Skin deep, “superficial”, is by the 1610s.^[3] By the skin of one's teeth, from the mid-16th century, comes from a misquotation of the Book of Job, “I am escaped with the skin of my teeth”.^[6] Skinny first meant “of the skin” about 1400,^[2] and skint, from the 1920s, is a variant of skinned.^[6] In jazz slang a skin is a drum, from 1927.^[3] The adjective, “involving nudity”, as in skin magazine, is from about 1935 in Merriam-Webster^[4] and 1968 in Etymonline.^[3] Skin diving is from 1938.^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1200 – an animal hide.^[2][3]
• before 1325 – the skin of a body.^[2]
• 1392 – verb, to circumcise.^[2]
• late 14th century – the skin of a fruit.^[3]
• 1540s – verb, to cover with skin.^[3]
• 1610s – skin deep.^[3]
• 1868 – skin game.^[3]
• 1927 – a drum (jazz slang).^[3]
• 1938 – skin diving.^[2]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. The outer layer of tissue covering the body of a person or animal.
2. The hide or pelt of an animal.
3. The outer layer of a fruit or vegetable; a peel or rind.
4. A thin layer that forms on a liquid; an outer covering, as of an aircraft.
5. (computing) A design that changes the look of a program's interface.

Verb

1. To remove the skin from.
2. To scrape the skin from (a part of the body) by accident.
3. (informal) To cheat out of money; to swindle.

Adjective

1. Involving nudity: a skin magazine.

Word family

• skinless
• skinlike
• skinflint
• skinner
• skinnery
• thin-skinned
• thick-skinned

Related words

• skinny
• skint
• skinhead
• hide

Usage notes

Skinhead first named US Marine recruits in the 1950s, for their cropped hair, before it was used of the British youth movement of the 1970s.^[6]

References

1. ^ Jones, Daniel (2011), Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary, 18th ed., ed. Peter Roach, Jane Setter and John Esling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c d Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b Simpson, J. A.; Weiner, E. S. C., eds. (1989), The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press