skin

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   an outer surface (usually thin)

   the skin of an airplane

2. 2
   noun

   a natural protective body covering and site of the sense of touch

   your skin is the largest organ of your body

3. 3
   noun

   a person's body, regarded as their life

   We tried to save their skin.

4. 4
   verb

   bruise, cut, or injure the skin or the surface of

   I skinned my knee when I fell.

5. 5
   noun

   The outer protective layer of the body of any animal, including of a human.

   He is so disgusting he makes my skin crawl.

6. 6
   noun

   A congealed layer on the surface of a liquid.

   In order to get to the rest of the paint in the can, you′ll have to remove the skin floating on top of it.

7. 7
   noun

   A set of resources that modifies the appearance and/or layout of the graphical user interface of a computer program.

   You can use this skin to change how the browser looks.

8. 8
   noun

   An alternate appearance (texture map or geometry) for a character model in a video game.

   My friend likes to use a Spider-Man skin in Fortnite.

Etymology

From Middle English skyn, skinn, from Old English scinn, from Old Norse skinn (“animal hide”), from Proto-Germanic *skinþą, from Proto-Indo-European *sken- (“to split off”), nasal variant of *skeh₁i-d- (“to cut”). Partially displaced native Old English hȳd (“skin, hide”), from which derives hide. Cognate with Dutch schinde (“bark”), dialectal German Schinde (“fruit peel”); also Breton skant (“scales”), Old Irish cenn (“covering, shell”), Irish scáin (“to tear, burst”), Latin scindō (“to split, divide”), Sanskrit छिनत्ति (chinátti, “to split”).