Word.ws English Dictionary

skinfolk

skinfolk noun: people who share the same skin color (race) with one another, especially when they are not otherwise closely associated or similar.

Noun

skinfolk pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only, uncommon) People who share the same skin color (race) with one another, especially when they are not otherwise closely associated or similar.
    • It was, in part, this designation that Zora Neale Hurston sought to clarify with the distinction between "kinfolk" and "skinfolk" where one could imagine that all of one's skinfolk were not one's kinfolk (or lacked a good brain) and gave the skinfolk a bad name (Hurston, 1942).1996, Diane L. Wolf, Feminist dilemmas in fieldwork
    • “As the saying goes, not everyone who's our skinfolk is our kinfolk,” James would quip, and “it's more important to have a brother or sister in Christ than a brother or sister in skin.2011, Keli Goff, The GQ Candidate: A Novel, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 126

Origin of skinfolk

From skin + folk, modelled on kinfolk.

Questions about skinfolk

What does skinfolk mean?
Skinfolk means people who share the same skin color (race) with one another, especially when they are not otherwise closely associated or similar.
What part of speech is skinfolk?
Skinfolk is a noun.

Words near skinfolk in the dictionary

  1. skinfluencers
  2. skinflute
  3. skinflutes
  4. skinfold
  5. skinfolds
  6. skinfolk
  7. skinfood
  8. skinfoods
  9. skinful
  10. skinfuls
  11. skingirl

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: skinfolk (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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