Word.ws English Dictionary

get under someone's skin

get under someone's skin verb: to irritate someone.

Verb

get under someone's skin (third-person singular simple present gets under someone's skin, present participle getting under someone's skin, simple past got under someone's skin, past participle (UK) got under someone's skin or (US) gotten under someone's skin)

  1. (idiomatic) To irritate someone.
    • [T]his Bolshevist stuff gets under my skin. I've got a home and a family here. I started in to work when I was thirteen, and all I've got I've made and saved right here.1920, Mary Roberts Rinehart, chapter 15, in A Poor Wise Man
    • She could get under his skin and drag on the raw places.1929, Edgar Wallace, chapter 57, in The Black
  2. (idiomatic) To make a memorable impression or have a strong effect on someone; to impact someone's feelings, especially when such an effect is not expected or wanted.
    • Some TV shows get under your skin with lovable characters or subtle writing.2003 July 28, James Poniewozik, “Body Shop”, in TIME, archived from the original on 30 Jan 2012
    • More than 400 people died from heat in 2022, but there was one story, an African American teenager called Caleb Blair, which got under my skin.2023 February 17, Nina Lakhani, “Down to Earth: The Arizona teen whose death in extreme heat is a warning of tragic things to come”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

Forms of get under someone's skin

third-person singular presentgets under someone's skin
present participlegetting under someone's skin
pastgot under someone's skin
past participle UKgot under someone's skin
past participle USgotten under someone's skin
alternative uncommonget underneath someone's skin

Questions about get under someone's skin

What does get under someone's skin mean?
Get under someone's skin means to irritate someone.
What part of speech is get under someone's skin?
Get under someone's skin is a verb.
What is the past tense of get under someone's skin?
The past tense of get under someone's skin is got under someone's skin.

Words near get under someone's skin in the dictionary

  1. get to work
  2. get together
  3. get turned around
  4. get under it
  5. get under someone's goat
  6. get under someone's skin
  7. get underneath someone's skin
  8. get up
  9. get up early
  10. get up in
  11. get up in someone's face

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: get under someone's skin (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-get under someone's skin.ogg.

Cite this entry: “get under someone's skin.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/get_under_someone%27s_skin. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.