Skin in the Game

Douglas G. Wilson douglas at NB.NET
Thu Sep 4 02:54:23 UTC 2008


This was discussed a little on this list about a year ago. The 1992 Ross
Perot quote was mentioned. Google News Archive search turns up a few
instances dated from the late 1980's but the links are all useless (to
me) so I can't verify.

It seems that "a little skin" here = "a small stake". Maybe the basic
idea is that if one won't risk his life/ass/fortune he might still risk
a little bit of his 'skin'.  The superficial 'feel' of the expression
(to me) is that of pseudo-good-old-boy quasi-machismo (but maybe I'm FOS
again).

-- Doug Wilson

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