Word.ws English Dictionary

skin a flint

skin a flint verb: go to great lengths to save or gain something, particularly money.

Verb

skin a flint (third-person singular simple present skins a flint, present participle skinning a flint, simple past and past participle skinned a flint)

  1. (excessive, figuratively) Go to great lengths to save or gain something, particularly money.
    • Deed, it wasn't Jane, for she just hates ye; she always says ye're an ould miser, an' ye'd skin a flint.Fitzpatrick, Kathleen (1937), The Weans at Rowallan, page 54
  2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see skin, a, flint.
    • The old women used to say that he would have skinned a flint to have saved a halfpenny, if he had spoilt a sixpenny knife in doing it.Miller, Thomas (1847), The Boy's Spring Book, page 33

Forms of skin a flint

third-person singular presentskins a flint
present participleskinning a flint
past participleskinned a flint
pastskinned a flint

Words formed from skin a flint

Questions about skin a flint

What does skin a flint mean?
Skin a flint means go to great lengths to save or gain something, particularly money.
What part of speech is skin a flint?
Skin a flint is a verb.
What is the past tense of skin a flint?
The past tense of skin a flint is skinned a flint.

Words near skin a flint in the dictionary

  1. skimpy
  2. skims
  3. skims off
  4. skims through
  5. skin
  6. skin a flint
  7. skin and blister
  8. skin and blisters
  9. skin and bone
  10. skin and bones
  11. skin and grin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: skin a flint (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.

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