skin

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   the natural outer layer that covers the body of a person or animal

   After a day at the beach, her skin was red from the sun.

2. 2
   noun

   the thin outer layer or covering of something

   You should remove the skin of the apple before cooking it.

3. 3
   noun

   a thin solid layer that forms on the surface of a liquid

   A skin had formed on top of the paint in the open can.

4. 4
   verb

   to hurt the surface of part of your body by scraping it

   I skinned my knee when I fell off my bike.

Multiword verbs with skin

• skin over Phrasal verb A2

  to become covered with a new layer of skin as an injury heals

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Skin was borrowed from Old Norse during the later Old English period, replacing hide in many uses. Skint, recorded in the 1920s, is a variant of colloquial skinned in the sense “having no money.”

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”).

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary