skin
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "skin", 4-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "skin" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "skin" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
skin is aEnglishnoun. It means: The outer protective layer of the body of any animal, including of a human. Pronounced /skɪn/. It ranks #1,319 in English word frequency. Often confused with son and sun.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | skin |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /skɪn/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #1,319 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for skin is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /skɪn/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,319 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 18 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for skin, with forms such as "ksin", "sikn", and "skinn". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "son", "sun", "sky", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English skyn, skinn, from Old English scinn, from Old Norse skinn (“animal hide”), from Proto-Germanic *skinþą, from Proto-Indo-European *sken- (“to split off”), nasal variant of *skeh₁i-d- (“to cut”). Partially displaced native Old English hȳd … Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is skin, spelled S-K-I-N, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1The outer protective layer of the body of any animal, including of a human.
- 2The outer protective layer of the fruit of a plant.
- 3The skin and fur of an individual animal used by humans for clothing, upholstery, etc.
- 4A congealed layer on the surface of a liquid.
- 5A set of resources that modifies the appearance and/or layout of the graphical user interface of a computer program.
- 6An alternate appearance (texture map or geometry) for a character model in a video game.
- 7Rolling paper for cigarettes.
- 8Clipping of skinhead.
- 9A subgroup of Australian aboriginal people.
- 10Bare flesh, particularly bare breasts.
- 11A vessel made of skin, used for holding liquids.
- 12That part of a sail, when furled, which remains on the outside and covers the whole.
- 13The covering, as of planking or iron plates, outside the framing, forming the sides and bottom of a vessel; the shell; also, a lining inside the framing.
- 14The outer surface covering much of the wings and fuselage of an aircraft.
- 15A drink of whisky served hot.
- 16A person; chap.
- 17A purse.
- 18A member of the team not wearing shirts, in a shirts and skins game.
Etymology
From Middle English skyn, skinn, from Old English scinn, from Old Norse skinn (“animal hide”), from Proto-Germanic *skinþą, from Proto-Indo-European *sken- (“to split off”), nasal variant of *skeh₁i-d- (“to cut”). Partially displaced native Old English hȳd (“skin, hide”), from which derives hide. Cognate with Dutch schinde (“bark”), dialectal German Schinde (“fruit peel”); also Breton skant (“scales”), Old Irish cenn (“covering, shell”), Irish scáin (“to tear, burst”), Latin scindō (“to split, divide”), Sanskrit छिनत्ति (chinátti, “to split”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: ksin,sikn,skinn,skkin,skni,sskin
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for skin
Misspelling Variants of "skin"
Frequency rank: #1,319 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter S in our English index: