Idioms: Alive - skin sb a.

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Idiom(s) of the day: Skin someone alive

Variation(s):

My category (Russian-to-English translation): Переживание и страх (Frustration and fear). Контроль и влияние (Control and influence). Безопасность и риск (Safety and risk). Неприятности и проблемы (Trouble and difficulty)

Explanation(s):

Collins Cobuild Dictionary of Idioms, 2004 (CCDI):

If you say that someone is able to skin you alive, you mean that they are much stronger or more powerful than you and may exploit you or ruin you.

If someone threatens to skin you alive, they are threatening to punish you severely.

Lingvo (www.lingvo.com):

to torture or fleece callously or mercilessly

To scold angrily; to spank or beat; to defeat

Babylon (www.babylon.com):

remove one's skin while he is still alive; save; defeat

scold angrily, spank or beat

to punish or tell someone off severely

Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary v4.7:

to reprimand, scold; to subdue completely, esp. in a cruel or ruthless manner

Translation(s):

CCDI:

Обобрать кого-либо дочиста; ободрать как липку.

Спустить шкуру с кого-либо; живого места не оставить на ком-либо; сделать котлету из кого-либо

Lingvo (www.lingvo.com):

драть шкуру [три шкуры, семь шкур] с кого-л

Babylon (www.babylon.com):

Multitran (www.multitran.ru):

спустить шкуру, снять скальп; нанести сокрушительный удар, живьём сдирать кожу

Multilex (www.multilex.ru):

Examples:

CCDI:

They are fiercely competitive. If they can skin us alive in business, they will.

Anyone who reads your finance pages will see that shareholders in some major banks have been skinned alive.

Who let the bloody dog out? You catch that animal Ernie, or you’ll get skinned alive.

Lingvo (www.lingvo.com):

Mother will skin you alive when she sees your torn pants. Dad was ready to skin us alive when he found we had ruined his saw. We all did our best, but the visiting gymnastic team skinned us alive.

do that once more, and I'll skin you alive

Dad would skin me alive if I forgot it

Just medium evil. Nowhere near the calibre of evil suggested by Marcellus Wallace in The Gold Watch, Pulp Fiction, 1994, when he said to Zed and what remained of Maynard, I'm gonna get medieval on your ass. Torturing them, perhaps even skinning them alive, was not out of the question.

Babylon (www.babylon.com):

She told her son that if he was late for dinner she would skin him alive.

Dad would skin me alive if I forgot it.

My mother will skin me alive for being so late home.

Oxford English Dictionary (OED) v4.0:

Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary v4.7:

The home team was skinned alive this afternoon.

British National Corpus (BNC), Mark Davies (http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/): [skin] * alive, total 5

I'm dreadfully late and Sister Margaret will skin me alive. I'm supposed to be helping her to bake bread.

I decided to leave the silver bracelet where it was; Fat Harry would skin you alive for taking a crumb of bread from his plate.

Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), Mark Davies (http:// www.americancorpus.org/): [skin] * alive, total 37

But there are too many other women in the world for me to worry about a psalm-singing bishop who's working for lawyers that're trying to skin me alive.

And if you tell one single soul we've been here, I'll skin you alive.

Beth was hell on wheels. She skinned me alive for what - ten years?

Work with a man, ride with him, polish off a few quarts of whiskey in his company while he's skinning you alive at the poker table and then try telling me you don't worry on his account when his future looks dicey.

Be honest, you know the answer. They would have skinned Clinton alive and thrown what was left of his carcass in Gitmo.

There were dirty clothes piled thigh-high in her living room, open suitcases by the piano, a stack of mail she couldn't seem to face and a manager ready to skin her alive if that would get her to do what she wanted.

My companion project: An Idiom a Day (www.twitter.com/AVDemid): Skinning somebody alive may involve cleaning them out and crushing them as well as removing their skin.