Skin is Norse, from Old Norse skinn, borrowed about 1200, and the hard sk- is the tell — English's own words softened to sh-. The usual Anglo-Saxon word for the covering of a body was hide, which survives but has been pushed down the register into leather and hunting.
The word originally meant an animal hide, usually dressed and tanned, and only in the early 1300s was it applied to the living epidermis of a person, and later still to fruit and vegetables. The Germanic root means "to peel off, to flay," from an older root meaning "to cut," and its relatives are appropriately violent: German schinden means "to flay." Skin belongs to the same everyday Norse layer as knife, law, take, want, sky and egg — vocabulary so ordinary that its foreignness is invisible.
skin
(n.)
c. 1200, "animal hide" (usually dressed and tanned), from Old Norse
skinn
"animal hide, fur," from Proto-Germanic
*skinth-
(source also of rare Old English
scinn
, Old High German
scinten
, German
schinden
"to flay, skin;" German dialectal
schind
"skin of a fruit," Flemish
schinde
"bark"), from PIE
*sken-
"to peel off, flay" (source also of Breton
scant
"scale of a fish," Irish
scainim
"I tear, I burst"), extended form of root
*sek-
"to cut."
The usual Anglo-Saxon word is
hide
(n.1). The meaning "epidermis of a living animal or person" is attested from early 14c.; extended to fruits, vegetables, etc. late 14c. Jazz slang sense of "drum" is from 1927. As short for
skinhead
from 1970. As an adjective, it formerly had a slang sense of "cheating" (1868, compare the verb); that of "pornographic" is attested from 1968.
Skin deep
"superficial, not deeper than the thickness of the skin" (also literally, of wounds, etc.) is attested by 1610s:
All the carnall beauty of my wife, Is but skin-deep.
[Sir Thomas Overbury, "A Wife," 1613; the poem was a main motive for his murder]
The
skin of one's teeth
as the narrowest of margins is attested from 1550s in the Geneva Bible, a literal translation of the Hebrew text in Job xix.20. To
get under (someone's) skin
"annoy" is from 1896.
Skin graft
is from 1871.
Skin merchant
"recruiting officer" is from 1792 (the older sense is "dealer in hides").
Skin and bone
as a description of emaciation or extreme leanness is in Middle English:
Ful of fleissche Y was to fele, Now ... Me is lefte But skyn & boon. [hymn, c. 1430]
also from c. 1200
skin
(v.)
late 14c.,
skinnen
, "to remove the skin from" (originally in reference to circumcision), from
skin
(n.). As "to have (a particular kind of) skin" from c. 1400. As "provide with skin, cover as with skin," 1540s.
In 19c. U.S. colloquial use, "to strip of valuable possessions, fleece, plunder;" hence
skin-game
(1868), one in which one player has no chance against the others (as with a stacked deck), the type of con game played in a
skin-house
("gambling house;" the same phrase, for "theater featuring nude women" is attested by 1972).
Skin the cat
in gymnastics is from 1845. Related:
Skinned
;
skinning
.
also from late 14c.
skin came in through Old Norse, and its spelling follows that family's conventions.
How that family writes these sounds
| /sk/ at the start | sk-, never sc- or sh-sky, skin, skirt, skull |
What gives it away on the page
| sk- | Native sc- had already softened to sh-, so a hard sk- came from somewhere else.sky, skin, skirt, skill, skull |
Placing it without the spelling
| a hard /sk/ at the start | Old Norsesky, skin, skirt, skull |
Old Norse in the spelling guide · guess another word's family