Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Idioms 291. The idiom today is the "skin of one's
teeth. " Okay. Let's take a look at the note here. If someone does something by the
skin of his or her teeth. They were narrow narrowly able to do it
or barely able to do it, to accomplish it. If this idiom was used in regard to time
it's very similar to the idiom in the nick of time. So if you do something by
the skin of your teeth and you mean as far as time is concerned it's very close
in meaning. You were just barely able to do it in time. Okay. So let's continue. The
origin of this phrase comes directly from the Bible in the book of Job. Okay.
The actual quote was " my bone cleaveth to my skin. "Now cleaveth that's, that's Old
English. Today we still have cleave. Cleave means like to cut or split. So I
don't know exactly what happened to him whether he had some disease or he had a
terrible accident but he suffered some misfortune where his bone and his skin
is splitting . It must have been really painful." But cleaveth it to my skin and to
my flesh. I escaped with the skin of my teeth. "
Okay. The main idea of this quote was Job was barely able to escape or had a
narrow escape. We could say it that way too. In the story Job was sent many
misfortunes to shake and test his strong faith.
So this, these were sent by the devil. To check to, to test his faith to try to you
know make him give up his faith. You know or try to make him think that the
misfortunes are so bad and it's not worth having faith or something like
that. His misfortunes were so strong that he was barely able to get through it. So
that's the origin. That's where the idea comes from originally.
All right and so let's just look at three here. Example number one, I only passed
that test by the skin of my teeth. Yeah. Whatever the number was. Whether the
60 or 70 was passing, he probably means he just got like a 60 or 61 or a 70 or
71 what , whatever the number was that was considered passing or a passing grade. Okay.
Number two here. I just made it onto the flight by the skin of my teeth.
They were about to close the door and not let anyone else on the flight. So
they probably just made a last call and he's probably running and he's getting
there just as they're about to close the door. So he made it by the skin of his
teeth. Okay. Good and number three here. That fireman was able to rescue that
child or some small child and jump out of the window by the skin of his teeth.
The room exploded several seconds later. So he just got out jumped out you know,
just barely got to the ground and then maybe the room behind him or the
building behind him. There was a big explosion where if he didn't do that, he
probably would have died and the child would have died. So he made it and he was
able to rescue her ... that small child by the skin of his teeth. Okay. Good. Anyway, I
hope you got it. I hope it was clear. I hope it was informative. Thank you for your time.
Bye-bye.