On "Skin in the Game" and Other Corporate Jargon

The second issue of Conde Nast's Portfolio, the glossy business magazine, hits newsstands soon. Meanwhile, the companion web site has published a glossary of corporate-speak that's neither as comprehensive nor as revealing as it might have been. I was especially disappointed not to see "skin in the game" on the list: it crops up regularly as a search term that brings readers to this blog.

I briefly discussed "skin in the game" in the comments to a post I wrote about clichés last year. For the record, here's the story I've been able to cobble together:

The phrase first appeared in writing in 1991, which means it probably was first spoken in the 1980s; it's been attributed variously to Ross Perot and Warren Buffett. Although it sounds like a reference to bodily harm, it's more likely about money: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, cited in this post from the American Dialect Society's listserv, "skin" was used as a synonym for "dollar" as early as 1930. And much earlier--in the late eighteenth century--a "skin" was a money-purse (possibly made of animal skin).

So: to have "skin in the game" is to have a financial stake.

(It's interesting, though possibly irrelevant, to consider that "buck"--another slang term for "dollar"--may be a shortening of "buckskin." This sense of "buck" was first recorded in 1856.)

(For the Portfolio lead, hat tip to Working With Words,)

Comments

[Charles]

Any relationship to "skins game" - the golf match were competitors win "skins" by having the lowest unique score on a particular hole? If two or more players tie, there is no winner for that hole. Of course, there are many variations, including the one used on the televised version, where the prize money for a particular hole "carries over" each time there is no skin so that a skin won after, say, 5 tied holes gets the accumulated prize money.

[Nancy]

Charles: I couldn't find anything authoritative to confirm that "skin in the game" is related to "skins game." William Safire wrote about the two expressions in his NY Times "On Language" column last year: http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F40C12FE3E550C748DDDA00894DE404482
...but he is not generally considered the last word on idioms. Perhaps one of the linguists who read this blog would care to weigh in?