A set of adult human teeth. Photo of the lower part of a person’s face with the mouth open and displaying the teeth.
31 August 2022
To escape by the skin of one’s teeth is to narrowly avoid some hazard. It’s an idiom, which by definition makes no literal sense; teeth, of course, don’t have skin. It’s an example of what happens when one attempts to translate an idiom word for word from one language to another.
Unlike many other idioms, however, we know its origin and how it became a fixture in the English language. The phrase is the result of overly literal Biblical translation. It first appears in the 1560 Geneva Bible in Job 19:20. This verse appears in the midst of a passage where Job is complaining about his trials and tribulations:
My bone cleaueth to my skin & to my flesh, and I haue escaped with the skinne of my tethe.
The phrasing was repeated, with one minor change, in the 1611 Authorized or King James Version:
My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.
Its place in this translation is what secured its place as an idiom.
But, as I said, it is an overly literal translation. The original Hebrew is בְּעוֹר שִׁנָּי (bĕʿōr šinnāi, with the skin of my teeth). The exact meaning of this Hebrew passage has been subject to much commentary and debate, but most scholars agree that it has nothing to do with escaping or avoiding hazards. The Latin Vulgate gives a different translation, which, regardless of whether or not it is an accurate rendition of the original Hebrew meaning, has the virtues of making sense and being internally consistent with the rest of the passage. Job 19:20 in that translation reads:
pelli meae consumptis carnibus adhesit os meum et derelicta sunt tantummodo labia circa dentes meos
(The flesh being consumed, my bone has adhered to my skin, and nothing but lips are left about my teeth)
Sources:
The Bible: Authorized King James Version (1611). Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997, Job 19:20.
The Bible and Holy Scriptures Conteyned in the Olde and Newe Testament. Geneva: Rouland Hall, 1560, Job 19:20. Early English Books Online.
Biblia Sacra Vulgata, fifth edition. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2007, Job 19:20.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2009, s.v. skin, n.
Photo credit: Tomas Gunnarsson, 2006, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.