Etymologically
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skin

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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
  • 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