Thursday, April 28, 2005
On Language 4/27: Q&A’s about teeth, guts, and Kleenex
Sink your teeth into this: Phrase remains elusive
Chicago Tribune, April 27, 2005
By Nathan Bierma
temp.link/perm.preview
As for “by the skin of one’s teeth,” it’s no urban legend that the phrase originated in the Bible, but its meaning is uncertain. The phrase is first cited in the Geneva Bible of the 16th Century, which translated Job 19:20 from Hebrew as “I have escaped with the skin of my teeth.”
Despite the odd imagery, the phrase caught on as an idiom. Biblical commentators speculate that the phrase either refers to the gums, or that it means “nothing,” because skin does not exist on teeth.
After I turned in this piece, I asked my Latin prof about the OED’s comment that the Septuagint and Vulgate conflict in their rendering of this verse, and the translation of the Vulgate’s labia circa dentes meos.
The discrepancy between Septuagint and Vulgate is certainly there: Septuagint says “my flesh has rotted/wasted away within my skin and my bones are (held) in my teeth.”
“labium/labia” normally means “lip” in Latin, though it can mean “flange” ... “labia circa dentes meos” could be read as “lips around my teeth.” [Since] the context [is] (literally) “to my skin my bone adheres, the flesh consumed, and left behind are only the lips around my teeth” ... the translators [must] get “I escaped by skin of my teeth” from the Hebrew. The figure of speech suggests to me that it should be read neither as a reference to the lips nor gums, but to (non-existent) lips on the teeth themselves. If forced to choose between lips and gums I guess I’d go for gums.
Update: Jim Speta of the Northwestern University School of Law advises, “When a trademark becomes generic—denoting a class of goods, not just those from a particular source—trademark lawyers call it ‘genericide.’”