skint

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.^[1]

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

• Audio (General Australian):

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• Audio (US):

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• Rhymes: -ɪnt

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.

2. (slang) skinned

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

• See also Thesaurus:impoverished

• skintly
• skintness

• knits, sinkt, snikt, stink, tinks

skint

1. past participle of skinne