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  • Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Idioms 291. The idiom today is the "skin of one's

  • teeth. " Okay. Let's take a look at the note here. If someone does something by the

  • skin of his or her teeth. They were narrow narrowly able to do it

  • or barely able to do it, to accomplish it. If this idiom was used in regard to time

  • it's very similar to the idiom in the nick of time. So if you do something by

  • the skin of your teeth and you mean as far as time is concerned it's very close

  • in meaning. You were just barely able to do it in time. Okay. So let's continue. The

  • origin of this phrase comes directly from the Bible in the book of Job. Okay.

  • The actual quote was " my bone cleaveth to my skin. "Now cleaveth that's, that's Old

  • English. Today we still have cleave. Cleave means like to cut or split. So I

  • don't know exactly what happened to him whether he had some disease or he had a

  • terrible accident but he suffered some misfortune where his bone and his skin

  • is splitting . It must have been really painful." But cleaveth it to my skin and to

  • my flesh. I escaped with the skin of my teeth. "

  • Okay. The main idea of this quote was Job was barely able to escape or had a

  • narrow escape. We could say it that way too. In the story Job was sent many

  • misfortunes to shake and test his strong faith.

  • So this, these were sent by the devil. To check to, to test his faith to try to you

  • know make him give up his faith. You know or try to make him think that the

  • misfortunes are so bad and it's not worth having faith or something like

  • that. His misfortunes were so strong that he was barely able to get through it. So

  • that's the origin. That's where the idea comes from originally.

  • All right and so let's just look at three here. Example number one, I only passed

  • that test by the skin of my teeth. Yeah. Whatever the number was. Whether the

  • 60 or 70 was passing, he probably means he just got like a 60 or 61 or a 70 or

  • 71 what , whatever the number was that was considered passing or a passing grade. Okay.

  • Number two here. I just made it onto the flight by the skin of my teeth.

  • They were about to close the door and not let anyone else on the flight. So

  • they probably just made a last call and he's probably running and he's getting

  • there just as they're about to close the door. So he made it by the skin of his

  • teeth. Okay. Good and number three here. That fireman was able to rescue that

  • child or some small child and jump out of the window by the skin of his teeth.

  • The room exploded several seconds later. So he just got out jumped out you know,

  • just barely got to the ground and then maybe the room behind him or the

  • building behind him. There was a big explosion where if he didn't do that, he

  • probably would have died and the child would have died. So he made it and he was

  • able to rescue her ... that small child by the skin of his teeth. Okay. Good. Anyway, I

  • hope you got it. I hope it was clear. I hope it was informative. Thank you for your time.

  • Bye-bye.

Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Idioms 291. The idiom today is the "skin of one's

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