SKIN : nf La skin is the body envelope of with animals vertebrates and the outer shell of fruits.
Life, existence. Hold on to his skin. Play, risk, save your skin; leave his skin there.
To have the skin of someone, to take revenge. I will have your skin!
We will hide him : we will kill him.
To be punctured, to pierce the skin: to take bullets (of a weapon); to get killed.
Receive twelve bullets (from a weapon) in the skin.
Catch someone by the skin of the neck, back, buttocks, ass: hold him at the last moment.
Cost the skin of the buttocks, very expensive (The eyes of the head) (see expression below).
Close to the skin: Who reacts to the slightest solicitation (see expression below).
To have someone in your skin: to be very enamored, to be linked to him (her) for sexual reasons.
Cowhide: someone mean
In doggie skin: mediocre quality, zero.
Old skin: old woman.
Donkey skin: diploma, parchment.
To reduce oneself like a skin of sorrow (allusion to the novel by Balzac): material or moral good which is diminishing.
Ball skin or zebi skin: nothing at all.
The skin ! : Exclamation of refusal, of contempt.
- The expression "Close to the skin": On the surface of the skin - Which reacts to the slightest solicitation.
If we look closely at the verbs to flush and to touch, we find the word flower there: it dates from the XNUMXth century, comes from the Latin florem, which designated the flower but also "the thinnest part of something", meaning of which has The different meanings "best part", then "upper part" and, finally, "surface" arose.
It is from the latter that, in the middle of the XNUMXth century, the expression flush with to say "on the surface of" was born.
To understand the figurative meaning of “reaction to the smallest strain”, just think of the goose bumps that can be caused by the touch of a hand on the skin.
This is how a person with “skin-deep” sensitivity can very quickly react to what they sometimes mistakenly take for verbal aggression.
- The expression "To cost the skin of the buttocks / the skin of the ass / the skin of the balls / the eyes of the head": To cost very dear.
There is no certainty as to the origin of this series of expressions.
What we can say for sure is that in the XNUMXth century, Alphonse Allais simply used cost skin with the same meaning.
The first attestation of the version with buttocks dates only from 1976, although it is likely that it was used before.
The second version is similar to the first, but using a more vulgar word, and the third is an even more trivial version, reserved for the male sex who obviously cares about that skin as the apple of his eye.
The last variant offered, without skin this time, dates from the XNUMXth century and rightly insists on the importance that everyone gives to their eyes.
- The expression "Ball skin": Nothing.
Ce bullet there trivially designates the roubignolle, the coucougnette or the testicle. If this bouboule and his inseparable friend next door are "masculine intimacies not to be wasted", necessarily very precious in the eyes of its owner, the skin covering them would be as interesting and valuable as that of vegetables or vegetables. fruit which is good to throw away.
To complete the information, the current form is attested in 1877, and ball would be a shortened form of baloche, another slang name for the testis.
This expression is to be compared to cock skin ( zebi skin) which has exactly the same meaning and which also uses the skin of a very precious masculine instrument.
In the variant ball skin and horsehair broom, the horsehair broom, a modest instrument par excellence, reinforces the expression.