# by the skin of your teeth

idiom · CEFR B2

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/by-the-skin-of-your-teeth
Updated: 2026-06-07

## Meaning

Just barely

## Examples

- We caught the last ferry by the skin of our teeth.
- He passed the driving test by the skin of his teeth, with the examiner's pen already hovering over "fail".
- The team won the championship by the skin of their teeth after the opponent missed a final shot in the last second of the game.
- The company survived the crash by the skin of its teeth, saved by a loan that cleared the day before payroll was due.

## Origin

The phrase comes from Job 19:20, where Job, stripped of everything and covered in sores, describes how little of him is left: "My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth." The image is deliberately strange, because teeth have no skin — that is the point. Job is saying he has escaped with essentially nothing, the barest imaginable sliver of himself intact. The 1611 King James rendering fixed the odd phrasing in English, and it stuck. To do something by the skin of your teeth is to manage it by the narrowest of margins — to catch a train as the doors close, or pass an exam by a single mark.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.