[Ads-l] skinback

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

I was unable to find an entry for skinback or skin-back in the OED.

There are 13,263 matches for skinback in newspapers.com with a variety
of meanings which makes finding germane matches a hassle.

To start the process, here is a 1968 citation illustrating the
pertinent sense of skin-back in the journalism domain. The article
refers back to an episode in 1948 when many observers believed that
Thomas E. Dewey was about to defeat Harry S. Truman in a presidential
election.

Further below is a 1962 citation that seems to be pertinent.

Date: June 5, 1968
Newspaper: San Francisco Examiner
Newspaper Location: San Francisco, California
Article: Fearsome Forecasting
Author: Guy Wright
Quote Page 35, Column 2
Database: Newspapers.com

[Begin excerpt]
Marquis Childs, I remember, wrote a masterful analysis of the
consequences of Dewey's triumph on politics, the nation and the world.
It was a shame that such a classic should be shunted to the
wastebasket by the mere technicality that Dewey had lost.

While I sat there wondering what to do with this mess, the bell on the
teletype began to ring like a burglar alarm. Normally that's the
signal of impending news of great urgency -- a baseball score, a
Hollywood divorce or at least a war.

NOW IT ALERTED me to the frantic kill orders that began to pour out of
the teletype in hot pursuit of the errant columns.

Some papers printed them anyway, as a joke or a perverse confessional.
And so many columnists had to write skin-back followups that the
expression "to eat crow" was resurrected.
[End excerpt]

Date: December 26, 1962
Newspaper: News-Press
Newspaper Location: Fort Myers, Florida
Article: World Communism Placed on Defensive by Shock and Disillusion in 1962
Author: William L. Ryan (AP Special Correspondent)
Quote Page 3B, Column 3
Database: Newspapers.com

[Begin excerpt]
There was obvious confusion among European Communists. In Germany,
Khrushchev's caution required a skinback on the Communist threat to
drive the Allies out of West Berlin. It was a bitter pill for the
40,000 West German Communists and their allies on the other side of
the Berlin wall.
[End excerpt]

Garson

On Fri, Mar 13, 2020 at 1:59 PM Mark Mandel <markamandel at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Wilson, this old (71yrs) white guy, lifelong language geek, does not recall
> *ever* hearing "skinback" or "peel back [one's] skin" in any sense,
> including the foreskin. Plenty of times "walk( )back", verb or noun, but
> not "skin( )back".
>
> Mark Mandel
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 13, 2020, 1:38 PM Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > . "... peeling back your skin and feeling the pain."
> >
> > There's no pain involved in skinning it back.<har!har!>
> >
> > Can it truly be the case that journalists see no immediate connection
> > between the term, "skinback," as in the retraction of a premise and the
> > phrase, "skinning it back," as in the retraction of the foreskin? And "as
> > in peeling back your skin and feeling the pain" is actually meant to be
> > taken literally? There are actually (white?) people who peel back their
> > skin and feel the pain?
> >
> > Clearly, the Cotton Curtain was more impermeable than the Iron Curtain!
> >
> >
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org