I love HEL

One of the "funnest" classes ever was the History of the English Language, aka Linguistics. Every day a couple of people had to do "word stories," or etymologies. I'm not sure why I find them so fascinating.

One HELish site is www.word-detective.com. Here's what he says about the phrase "skin of my teeth."

"Dear Word Detective: I know that the origin of "By the skin of my teeth" is (supposedly) in the Book of Job, where the poor guy indicates that he has survived by the skin of his teeth. I tend to think of this phrase loosely meaning a "narrow escape," but I'm not really sure what that means as a literal translation. One version I heard was that the skin of your teeth are your gums and that poor Job had come so close to death that he had even lost all of his teeth. Can you shed any light on this? -- William Lewis, via the Internet."

I generally try to avoid answering questions about metaphors having to do with teeth, but since I'm trying to confront and overcome my most stubborn phobias this week (I've just returned from lunch with a lawyer, and I have an appointment to watch a Meryl Streep movie this afternoon), I'll give this one a shot.

The source of the phrase "by the skin of one's teeth" is indeed the Book of Job, although the precise phrase Job used was "My bone cleaveth to my skin, and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth" (not "by"). Just what the "skin" of one's teeth might be is a bit unclear, but it probably refers to the thin porcelain exterior of the tooth, not the gums. Job evidently kept his teeth, but just barely. It is also possible that he was saying that the margin of his escape was as narrow as the "skin" of a tooth is shallow -- the equivalent of a "hair's breadth." In any case, Job clearly meant that he'd had a very hard time of it, and the phrase has been used ever since to mean a very narrow or arduous escape.