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Mini: Skin Idioms · Why We Do What We Do

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  You're listening to Why we do what we do? Welcome to Why we do
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  what we do? Mini. I'm your host, Abraham, and I'm your
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  host Shane. Many episodes are these little short form episodes that we'll talk about
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  a particular topic that only takes us like fifteen minutes or less and three two
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  one go. What are we talking about Shane? Today? We're talking about
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  skin so much skin. Yes, So if you're uncomfortable with skin, you
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  can turn off this episode. But if you're not uncomfortable with skin, we're
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  going to teach you how to talk about skin using very specific idioms from the
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  English language. So this is a follow up to an episode we did on
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  idioms. At the time, we had found several idioms related to skin by
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  itself. We ended up not including them in that discussion. I think none
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  of them, possibly one, but I don't think any of them. And
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  so we are instead going to talk about those idioms now. And so the
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  first time we're going to tackle is thick skinned. So I have you ever
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  heard the ex depression being thick skinned? This means essentially to be unperturbed by
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  criticism or insult. So, as an example sentence, if you're going to
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  do work for which you are constantly being criticized, you're going to need thick
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  skin. Originally, it came from a record in Old English in the sixteen
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  hundreds describing the rinds of fruits and vegetables with thick rines, like bananas,
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  oranges, and melons. By the fifteen hundreds, thick skinned was used to
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  describe a person as dull or unintelligent. So that's kind of an interesting shift,
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  going to like being kind of like emotionally tough for being like a duller
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  unintelligent. Yeah, And then just as you said later, it came to
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  me someone who was insensitive to criticism or insult, so essentially that they would
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  tolerate high levels of that and not be bothered by it. One source cited
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  the Oxford English Dictionary as dating thick skinned back to the late sixteen hundreds.
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  I couldn't verify this, but that was one source that I found. So
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  the proposed rationale was that it meant that one skin was too thick to easily
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  pierce or damage. So if somebody was thick skin, you couldn't harm them
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  very easily. And obviously then the opposite of that is thin skin, which
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  implies the opposite, that one is easily put off, like becoming irate when
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  someone says Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. That would be thin skinned.
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  I'm sorry, did you just make a dig at the veterans of the War
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  on Christmas? How dare you? You can't make it? But I'm I'm
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  just filin. This is grinning. That's my favorite. That's my favorite thing
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  that's come up is the War on Christmas. Get out of here, all
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  right. So the next one that we're going to talk about is getting under
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  my skin, under the skin or into one's skin, and what that means
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  is under the skin means to be irritated by something, right, So the
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  example is these hypocrites talking heads are just getting under my skin. Yep,
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  exactly. Really could not pin down an origin for this one. I tried
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  looking a lot of different places and just couldn't find it. It seems to
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  have been around for a while. Most suggest that it is an allusion to
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  the fact that things that burrow into our skin or even just breaking skin is
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  an irritating experience to us, and so that calling something as getting under our
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  skin would result in irritation. But I couldn't find anything else that specifically cited
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  that. So under the skin means to reveal something deeply true. That is,
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  something is covered by a presentation a skin that misrepresents what is underneath.
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  Getting under the skin suggests seeing past the artificial barrier. So that's kind of
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  where it originally came from. An example of that is, like, we
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  learned what she was really like once we got under her skin. That one
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  I don't feel like i've heard as often. Sorry, under the skin,
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  sorry not her skin, got under the skin. Yeah, And so getting
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  under the skin of something essentially revealing the true nature of it, Like I
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  said, that's one I feel like I've heard less often, but that is
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  a way that it has been used. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's
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  the end to one's skin, which means to put yourself into someone else's shoes,
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  like the example being I thought I would be a good actor because I
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  can really get into the skin of my characters. It's like perspective taking almost
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  get into somebody else's I can see from somebody else's point of view. Yep.
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  So perfect, getting under the skin, into one's skin and under my
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  skin. M yep. That word's starting to become decontextulationy skin skin, all
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  right, skin skin skin, let's talk about by the skin of my teeth.
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  This one gives me like a very visceral reaction because I'm like, ugh,
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  I kind of I kind of feel that I like it. I'm like,
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  eh, it's like an imagining the skin. Yeah, I don't want
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  skin on my smilebones. Indeed, what this means is you're barely succeeding at
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  something within the narrowest possible margin of error, or by extreme lucks. So
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  the example would be I was able to graduate just by the skin of my
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  teeth, an experience that some of us have had. Yeah, any of
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  us are even all right origins there's a couple that are somewhat hotly contested,
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  but one possible origin is Hebrew from the Book of Job. That is,
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  I'm gonna putch this. I'm sorry, but it's something like bet or sinai,
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  which means with the skin of my teeth. However, many dispute this
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  as an accurate translation. The Latin Vulgate instead suggested only my lips are left
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  around my teeth as the translation for that. But so reading through these I
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  sort of synthesized various versions of the Bible. The past is essentially refers to
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  Job being diseased and so amazated that his head looked like a skeleton with skin.
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  Poor Job, so all that was left was my skin and my teeth.
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  So basically it ultimately came to me in the close call barely surviving some
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  ordeal or something like that, I'm just getting by, And that's essentially what
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  it's led to is like in maybe some circumstances, like in Job's case,
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  like I'm just getting by with the skin of my teeth because that's literally all
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  I've got left. But it's kind of evolved into you know, this more
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  narrow view of surviving a situation. Yeah, barely surviving because of a disagreement.
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  Yes, so should we go into skinny? Let's talk about skinny.
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  Actually, lets fast so that we can be skinny and takenical gad break two
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  minutes later. So skinny, so skinny. There's obviously one that probably people
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  have heard a lot, but it's actually interesting to think about why would we
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  describe someone's physical feature as skinny? Like why the words skinny? Right?
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  What that means here is I'm talking about is when we call something skinny,
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  we're essentially saying is very thin, usually a person's body or some creature's body,
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  and that it means that they have very little noticeable body fat or relatively
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  little. And that's what we usually made when we say skinny. Right,
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  So an example would be, he's so skinny, the looks like a skeleton.
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  Right. So, like I think of specifically Sandman, if you go
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  watch that show, the guy that plays Morpheus, very skinny, Okay,
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  like you can see like all of his muscles and ligaments and stuff when he
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  is naked. So or a Christian bale in the Mechanist when he actually fasts
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  himself to like drop a crazy amount of weight. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
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  absolutely. Now the origins kind of it's it's really interesting. Have we
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  really thought about what a weird word this is? Right? So, one
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  source suggested that it was first used to refer to Thinness in Shakespeare's Macbeth quote
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  you seem to understand me by each at once her choppy finger laying upon her
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  skinny lips end quote. So you know, for those of you who thought
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  you were away from from Shakespeare, there you go. We've got some here
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  back. Another origin refers to the phrase beauty is only skin deep and eventually
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  just turning into skinny as a reference to attractiveness. Yeah, there is one
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  possible suggestion. Yeah, And according to the Mental Floss article, the Oxford
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  English Dictionary references an early version that referred to the skin of youthful people and
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  its attractiveness. So I would interpret this to suggest that skinny evolved from looking
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  youthful, which is also generally thin or not fat. That's a common way
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  to describe somebody who looks youthful. Yeah, exactly. And so they're thin,
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  they're youthful, they have nice skin, they are skinny. I guess,
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  yes, absolutely. We're not just making this out. This is what
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  people have said. This is coming from sources. This is not our opinion
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  on it. Let's talk about skin in the game. Ooh, I actually
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  really like this phrase, even though like it is a skin one. So
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  what it means is like you have a financial or an investment term or to
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  have steak in something or to have invested interest such that your commitment is trustworthy
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  because you will lose something important if the investment fails. The game part of
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  this as a metaphor referring to an enterprise or an endeavor of some sort usually
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  a business or some type of field of play. Yeah. So for example
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  of using the skin in the game idiom, if you want to join our
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  group, you have to put some real skin in the game. Mm hmm
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  my bibit is to say it. There's quite a few possible origins to this
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  one I found. One is related to the idea of self preservation, sort
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  of saving one's own skin, and so our skin being important in that way.
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  Yeah. Another one is related to the use of skin is euphemism for
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  money, like skins, frog skins, toadskins, or golfers wagering skins against
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  their playing. So skins was commonly used as like a specific money euphemism.
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  I saw a proposal that this was made popular by warm it to describe investors
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  buying stock and a company in which they're running. So then they're actually motivated
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  to ensure that a company runs well, because there might be reasons too otherwise,
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  not trying to have a company run well and then profit off of its
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  demise. But if you have your own money invested in a company, then
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  you would have as he described, skin in the game. Yeah, that
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  makes sense. It suggested that this came about as recently as the sixties or
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  seventies. So nineteen sixties nineteen seventies is a fairly new idiom and one that
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  has been shaped up over the last couple decades. It's interesting that it's a
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  fairly new one compared to some of the other ones that we just mentioned.
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  So that's a few skin idioms. We've got thick skin, getting under my
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  skin, by the skin in my teeth, skinny, and skin in the
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  game. But why, though, that's always the question, isn't it.
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  So if we go back to our idioms episode, it is simply a way
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  of communicating inside of a particular culture, fitting in. It's usually some common
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  shared language. It's contextual a lot of times, or at least when it
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  started. Yeah, and then it just kind of gets passed stall on from
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  generation to generation, and so now we end up kind of re using these
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  things that don't really have the same meaning that it would have many many years
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  ago. But of course there is a question why skin, But I think
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  that kind of also relates to why any of them really, you know,
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  why any idiom? Skin is something ubiquitous with the particular quality of serving as
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  an outer covering. So both metaphorically communicating something important about the skin wearer and
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  obscuring the interior of the wearer. Now, of course, skin is also
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  simply part of everyone, but the part that we see the most, so
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  it's pigmentation. It has resulted in inhuman treatment of one another. So skin
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  has become this kind of this forefront discussion. It is a part of us
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  that is acutely noticeable when things go wrong. So especially too when there's injuries.
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  Right, so we know when our skin is broken, things are going
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  wrong. We got to keep our blood inside that outside. If the blood's
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  on the outside, we've got a real problem here. Yeah, of course.
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  And then as does not really news to anybody, but hey, we
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  use our skin in a lot of ways, such as piercing it with and
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  putting metal through it. We tattoo it, we brand it, we scar
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  it, sometimes on purpose, sometimes on accident. Leric I've always liked from
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  the band the receiving end of Sirens is quote, I've dressed up this canvas
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  skin painted something beautiful, yeah, end quote. I just always like that
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  sort of a way of describing the decorating of one's own skin. Yeah,
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  that's nice. I like that. Now, generally, unless language gets in
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  the way most people enjoy skin to skin contact with one another, like high
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  fives, hugs, handshakes, any other extracurriculars that go beyond that, which
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  has also been associated with the release of hormones associated with bonding and feelings of
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  love. So skin is a kind of important thing for us in many,
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  many ways. Yeah, it makes a lot of signs that we would use
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  that particularly. I mean, we used pretty much everything else as part of
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  our idioms, so why not skin. It seems like it's right right for
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  the plucking. Yeah, absolutely, I like that. I mean it makes
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  it makes sense. It's an important part of our existing. Yeah. It
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  is the largest organ of our body. Lots of sensitive parts of skin with
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  you know, neurons connected to it that gives us the feels. So I
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  don't know if you had this experience, but the first time I ever heard
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  the word epidermis epidermis was from The Simpsons. Oh yeah, that's right.
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  Yeah, yeah, your epidermis is showing and Bart falls and breaks his leg.
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  Yep. I think that was the first time I heard that as well.
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  Yeah, and that's the Alphad Hitchcock show where it's like the rear view
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  when he's sitting and he's like, yeah, rear window, that's what is
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  so great. What a great episode. Love the Simpsons. Yeah, absolutely,
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  all right, do you have anything else on skin or skin idioms or
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  skidiums? Nope. I think I'm good on that one. Okay, then
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  I think that's all we have. This is Abraham and this is Shane.
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  Why we Do what we Do Mini is out. See you've been listening to
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  Why We Do What We Do. You can learn more about this and other
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  episodes by going to WWD WWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and
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  we hope you have an awesome day