Skin In The Game

Tue Apr 17 14:41:11 UTC 2007

On the one hand, "skin" does not ordinarily refer to money in general, as do, e.g., "dough" and "bread."  It usu. refers to a currency note, usu. a dollar,  with the pl. "skins."

  OTOH, "not to have a 'skin' (dollar) in the game makes perfect sense, though IMO it sounds rather unidiomatic. "Nickel" sounds more likely in that context.  To "have no skin in that game" sounds even less idiomatic, if referring originally to (even) a dollar.

  JL

"Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: "Joel S. Berson"
Subject: Re: Skin In The Game
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At 4/16/2007 11:04 PM, sagehen wrote:
> I seem to have lost the first posts on this thread. I remember waiting to
>see when someone would mention that "skin" was at one time a term for a
>bill. I wasn't sure which denomination. OED yields one dollar from M20.
>Since "a skin in the game" seems pretty transparent, I'm wondering what the
>original question was?
>AM

For the benefit of sagehen, and anyone else who thought "a skin in
the game" was not transparent:

The original message did not actually ask a question. On 15 Apr 2007
Doug Harris wrote:
> From today's LA Times, in an article re the shrinking number of people
>paying US income tax:
>
>"Many people would think if you are a citizen, you ought to have skin in the
>game, and we have more and more people with no skin in the game," said Scott
>Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan, conservative-leaning
>research group. "From a social perspective, we ought to be concerned about
>that."
Doug continued by complaining about
>the number of sports terms, FAR too often unexplained, or
>self-evident, sneaking into 'general speak' ... Skin in the game
smacks of violence, to one's own body or someone else's. ...

And I repeat my thoughts about skin being simply money:

>Safire may have thought "The skin in this case is a synecdoche for
>the self, much as "head" stands for cattle and "sail" for ships. The
>game is the investment, commitment or gamble being undertaken." But
>my first association is money -- a much more pertinent concept in
>the context of taxes; and I find in OED2:
>
>skin (n) 1.c. slang. (See quots.)
> 1785 Grose Dict. Vulgar T., Skins, a tanner. a1790 H. T. Potter
> New Dict. Cant & Flash (1795) 53 Skin, a purse. 1812 J. H. Vaux
> Flash Dict., Skin, a purse, a money bag. [Hence in later slang
> Dicts.] 1821 D. Haggart Life 15 Young McGuire had taken some
> skins with a few shillings in each. 1856 Mayhew Gt. World London
> iii. (Farmer), Abstracting skins from gentlemen's pockets. 1902 S.
> Clapin New Dict. Americanisms 365 Skin.+ A purse; a
> pocket-book. 1935 A. J. Pollock Underworld Speaks 107/1 Skin, a
> pocketbook or wallet. 1936 J. Curtis Gilt Kid xii. 137 Proper jobs
> I mean. Not nicking skins from blokes what are lit up. 1955 D. W.
> Maurer in Publ. Amer. Dialect Soc. xxiv. 114 Synonymous terms [of
> billfold] are hide, skin, or poke.
>
>and
>
>2.b. U.S. slang. A dollar.
> 1930 [see by prep. 33e]. 1950 [see lip n. 3d]. 1976 R. B.
> Parker Promised Land xx. 121, I got a buyer with about a hundred
> thousand dollars+a hundred thousand skins.
>
>and
>
>10. b. U.S. slang. = skinflint.
> 1900 Ade More Fables 30 Some of the Folks+used to say that Henry
> was a Skin, and was too Stingy to give his Family enough to eat.
>
>As for golf's "skins game", while Safire has his authorities, isn't
>the amount of money won in each match referred to as "[so many] skins"?
>
>Although I suppose this may be support for Safire's synecdoche:
>
>10.c. Without contemptuous implications: a person (of a specified
>kind). Chiefly Anglo-Ir.
> 1914 Joyce Dubliners 152 Ah, poor Joe is a decent skin. 1939
> 'F. O'Brien' At Swim-Two-Birds 166 A decent skin if ever there was
> one, said Slug with warmth, a man that didn't stint the
> porter. 1958 B. Behan Borstal Boy iii. 258 These were lies+that
> Cragg was muttering about the Colonel, who wasn't a bad old skin at
> all,+since he got to know us. Ibid. 266 He seemed a decent old
> skin. 1966 F. Shaw et al. Lern Yerself Scouse 22 Ee's a good skin,
> he is an agreeable fellow.

Joel

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