"By the Skin of Your Teeth" Idiom Meaning, Origin & History | Superduper English Idioms
Channel: Superduper English Idioms
Date: 2020-07-07

0:00 - How to Say, “By the skin of your teeth…”
0:21 - Examples of “By the skin of your teeth…”
1:30 - Meaning of “By the skin of your teeth…”
1:47 - Origin of “By the skin of your teeth…”
3:34 - More Examples of “By the skin of your teeth…”
4:07 - Conclusion

“By the skin of your teeth…”

You might have heard the hilarious-sounding idiom, “by the skin of your teeth,” when someone is describing a situation in which you barely made it.

Perhaps someone was telling a story in which they were moments from disaster but succeeded, “I made it by the skin of my teeth.”

“We were late to the airport, but we caught our flight by the skin of our teeth,” your friend might be telling you the story of how they got out before lockdown.

Maybe you witnessed someone almost getting hit by a car, “They just made it across the street by the skin of their teeth.”

It is not hard to imagine a situation in which you almost failed, but made it with only seconds to spare…

… or perhaps a near-accident that came so close you could feel it on your skin.

The idiom, “by the skin of your teeth,” is somewhat illustrative because of “skin” and “teeth”, but it’s a little confusing, because teeth obviously do not have skin.

However, if we look to the origin of this idiom, we will find it in the Christian Bible, at Job 19:20 as "I have escaped with the skinne of my tethe."

“Skinne” refers to skin as we know it, but “tethe” refers to bone, rather than the teeth found in your mouth.

Thus, we can easily imagine how, “I have escaped with my skin and bones,” came to mean that someone just made it or barely escaped harm or death.

“By the skin of your teeth,” was perhaps kept in its original form because of the easy imagery of something whooshing past your face so closely that your teeth feel it.

Another idiom that has a similar meaning and mentions another body part is “by a hair”, or “by a whisker”.

As you know, a hair or a whisker is extremely thin and if you make it by a hair, then you barely just made it.

If you were a whisker away from stepping into an open manhole cover, consider yourself lucky!

“I was rock climbing and fell, but I managed to grab onto something, escaping death by the skin of my teeth!” your friend might tell you.

You might be talking to your cousin who is off to university, “You got in by the skin of your teeth. It doesn’t matter that you just made the cut - you’re in!”

So, if you’ve made it or avoided disaster by the thinnest of margins, don’t forget to say that you succeeded “by the skin of your teeth.”

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