By the skin of your teeth

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Meaning

Only just succeeding or escaping, with the smallest possible margin between success and failure. The possessive changes with the subject. It normally describes a narrow success or escape. Regional use: Biblical English precursor; modern idiom widespread.

Origin

Job 19:20 supplies the strange body image. The base Wycliffite text says that only the lips are left about the teeth; a skin-of-the-teeth rendering shown with it is a modern editorial alternative, not the medieval wording. Coverdale's 1535 Bible introduces skin around the teeth, and the Geneva Bible and King James Version say the speaker escaped with the skin of his teeth. The modern narrow-margin idiom is later still: Merriam-Webster dates that sense to 1794. Its medieval precursor should therefore not be mistaken for the familiar idiom itself.

Research Sources

  1. Bible Gateway: Job 19:20 in English translations Bible Gateway
  2. Cambridge Dictionary: by the skin of your teeth Cambridge University Press
  3. Merriam-Webster: by the skin of one's teeth Merriam-Webster

Variants

  • By the skin of one's teeth

Usage Examples

  • We caught the last train by the skin of our teeth.
  • The team qualified by the skin of its teeth.
  • She submitted the report by the skin of her teeth before the system closed.

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