Browse phrases beginning with: [A][B][C][D][E][F][G][H][I][J][K][L][M][N][O][P][Q][R][S][T][U,V][W][X,Y,Z] By the skin of your teethMeaning Narrowly; barely. Usually used in regard to a narrow escape from a disaster. Origin The phrase first appears in English in the Geneva Bible, 1560, in Job 19:20, which provides a literal translation of the original Hebrew:
Teeth don't have skin, of course, so the writer may have been alluding to the teeth's surface or simply to a notional minute measure - something that might now be referred to, with less poetic imagery then the biblical version, as 'as small as the hairs on a gnat's bollock'. |