skin
part of speech
noun (skin, skins); verb (skin, skins, skinned, skinning)
meaning for a pupil
1) The outer covering of a person's or animal's body. tree →
2) The outer layer of a fruit or vegetable: "banana skin". tree →
3) A thin layer that forms on top of a liquid: "skin on hot milk". tree →
4) As a verb, to scrape the skin off: "I skinned my knee." tree →
sense in the lessons
In science, skin is the body's biggest organ; it protects us from germs, keeps water in and helps us feel touch, heat and pain; sweat cools us. In safety: protect skin from sunburn; wash cuts; skin colours differ and all are normal. Phrases: by the skin of your teeth (only just), thick-skinned, skin and bones, sunscreen on skin.
examples
- Your skin protects your body. tree →
- Put sunscreen on your skin. tree →
- I peeled the skin off the orange. tree →
- She fell and skinned her knee. tree →
- Snakes shed their old skin. tree →
- Sweat on your skin helps you cool down. tree →
- People have many different skin colours. tree →
- We caught the bus by the skin of our teeth. tree →
- THE ASS IN THE LION'S SKIN tree →
note
"Skin" is usually uncountable for the body, countable for fruit ("two banana skins"). A snake "sheds" its skin. Sunburn hurts your skin even on cloudy days.
In the corpora
- Babies wear nappies, which are changed six to ten times a day, and nappy cream stops sore skin.
- Photos online are often smoothed with filters; real skin has lines and spots, and nobody looks like a filter.
- You followed the lessons' events in words, so you know what people said about rain, not how rain feels on skin.
- The tabla is a pair of Indian hand drums; pressing the skin while striking it changes the pitch.
- Zebras have black skin, so they are usually described as black with white stripes.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «skin» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.