<snip>
I don't believe the skinflint definition. [Peter C]
<snip>
There is an colourful early citation for flint skinning in Motteux'
Rabelais: 'May I be broil'd like a Red Herring, if I don't think they are
wise enough to skin a Flint' (1694). And the two earliest citations for
'skinflint' are in dictionaries of thieving slang: E B's *New Dictionary
... of the Canting Crew* (1700) and Bailey's *Canting Dictionary* (1721).
Now obviously there is something not quite right about all this. I can find
no citation to justify flint-skinning as a legitimate process along with
knapping flints, say, or striking them or to justify 'flint' as a verb
equivalent to 'flay'. So I assume that the phrase was comedic from the
start. I also assume that the canting dictionaries document usage which may
be somewhat older. So perhaps the origin is in some sort of variant on
*getting blood out of stones*, which itself goes back to the early 1660s.
One final observation. I rather think that 'skin' in these collocations
_may_ be being used from the outset in its metaphorical sense of 'swindle'
and not in its literal sense of removing some outer layer. This would place
the emergence of that meaning a good deal earlier than the early 1800s,
which is the date that is normally given.
CW
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'It was really only in spelling out the decrees of the high
command that we came to understand ourselves'
- Kafka
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