Word.ws English Dictionary

skin in the game

skin in the game noun: a stake; something at risk, especially with regard to money and investments.

Noun

skin in the game (uncountable)

  1. (idiomatic) A stake; something at risk, especially with regard to money and investments.
    • Companies must obtain accountability across all business functions if they are to harvest the fruits of technology. "Let everyone have skin in the game", Rogow said.1988 April 4, Alan Alper, “Inertia often stifles new technology”, in Computerworld, volume xxii, number 14, page 67
    • Says Bergsma: "We were flooded with financial types who didn't have their own skin in the game"1991 August 26, Edmund Faltermayer, “The Deal Decade: Verdict on the 80's”, in Fortune, pages 58–70

Examples of skin in the game in a sentence

  • [Ross] Perot has told people they can send $5 if they want to have "some skin in the game" but he does not actively solicit contributions and says he will finance his own campaign.1992 June 18, Associated Press, “Perot's campaign is wary of fund-raising operations”, in The Sun, San Bernardino, CA, page 22:
  • Supposedly, ordinary depositors don't bother to check the soundness of their banks because they don't actually have skin in the game.2009 December 18, Megan McArdle, “How Big a Problem is Moral Hazard?”, in The Atlantic:
  • At Wednesday’s Europa League final, more than half the tickets have gone to corporate guests and others with no skin in the game.2022 May 18, Adrian Chiles, “The closer your team gets to glory, the less likely you are to get a ticket. That can’t be right”, in The...

Synonyms of skin in the game

Origin of skin in the game

Attributed by some to Warren Buffett, but Buffett has denied this.

Questions about skin in the game

What does skin in the game mean?
Skin in the game means a stake; something at risk, especially with regard to money and investments.
How do you use skin in the game in a sentence?
[Ross] Perot has told people they can send $5 if they want to have "some skin in the game" but he does not actively solicit contributions and says he will finance his own campaign.
What part of speech is skin in the game?
Skin in the game is a noun.

Words near skin in the game in the dictionary

  1. skin graftings
  2. skin grafts
  3. skin group
  4. skin groups
  5. skin hunger
  6. skin in the game
  7. skin job
  8. skin jobs
  9. skin mag
  10. skin magazine
  11. skin magazines

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: skin in the game (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-skin in the game.ogg.

Cite this entry: “skin in the game.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/skin_in_the_game. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.