skint

English

Etymology

The "penniless" sense is attested since 1925 and is derived from a variant of skinned.

Note also the phrase skin a flint (“go to extreme lengths for the sake of gain or economy”), from the brittleness and hardness of flint which makes it almost impossible to remove just its skin without shattering it.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /skɪnt/
• (Scotland) IPA^(key): /skʌnt/

• Audio (Australian):

  (file)

• Audio (US):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪnt

Adjective

skint (comparative skinter or more skint, superlative skintest or most skint)

1. (slang, UK, Commonwealth, Ireland) Penniless, poor, impecunious, broke.
   • 2000, Tim Bradford, Is Shane MacGowan still alive?:

     There were a mixture of local people with cold, pinched faces and skint and harassed looking tourists sitting around fondling their itchsome facial hair, their tongues lolling into fizzy yellow pints of lager.

   • 2012, David Walliams [pseudonym; David Edward Williams], Ratburger, London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, →ISBN:

     Mr Grave proceeded to give a stern warning to those “errant pupils” who, against the rules, had been smuggling their mobile phones into school. This was just about everyone, though Zoe was far too skint to even dream of ever owning one.

   • 2025 November 14, Michael Bowes, R v Joshua Powell, sentencing remarks‎^[1], Paragraph 19:

     About 2-3 weeks prior to Emma Finch’s death you told two of your friends Abi that “he hoped his Nan died soon because he was skint […] and […] that he thought he was the only one getting money in the will when she died”.

2. (slang) skinned

Usage notes

• Cockney rhyming slang for skint is boracic lint, or just boracic. It is pronounced as barassic or brassic.

Synonyms

• See also Thesaurus:impoverished

Derived terms

• skintly
• skintness

Translations

penniless, poor, impecunious, broke — see also broke,‎ impecunious

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 手頭緊 / 手头紧 (zh) (shǒutóujǐn), 手緊 / 手紧 (zh) (shǒujǐn), 沒錢 / 没钱 (zh) (méiqián)

• Czech: švorc
• Dutch: aan den arme
• Finnish: auki (fi), rahaton (fi)
• German: abgebrannt (de), blank (de)
• Hungarian: szegény (hu), csóró (hu)
• Italian: al verde (it)
• Polish: spłukany (pl)
• Serbo-Croatian: шворц (švorc), декинтиран m (dekintiran)

Anagrams

• knits, sinkt, snikt, stink, tinks

Norwegian Bokmål

Verb

skint

1. past participle of skinne