The term skinnymalink, or a skinny marink, is one way the Scots refer to someone who’s thin. In the United States, the term goes back to the 1870’s. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Skinnymalink”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Marcy, and I’m calling from Winterville, Georgia.
Well, welcome to the show. How can we help?
Well, I grew up actually in Levittown, New York, and my grandparents were immigrants.
My mother was born in this country, and I have a brother who is currently 6’7″. He grew really quickly, and he was like maybe 6 feet by the time he was 13, so he was always really thin. And my mother used to call him a skinny marink. And it’s a funny word, and I don’t think it’s Yiddish. My grandparents spoke Yiddish, as my mother did. But it doesn’t sound like a Yiddish word, and I’ve never heard anybody else use it. So I was wondering if you knew where it came from.
Yeah, it’s a Scots word, just in short, yeah, from the Scottish version of English and Scots dialect of English. You’ll find it as far back as the 1870s throughout the United States and in Scotland. If you want to find some cool information on it, look in the Dictionary of Scots Language, DSL as it’s called, and you’ll just Google that. It’s open. It’s free to anyone. Full, great access to some awesome historical facts.
Online, right?
Yeah, online. Yeah, it’s amazing. And what you’ll find, first of all, is a ton of spellings for this word, seven or eight at least, maybe even more, because it’s primarily transmitted mouth to ear. And so skinny malink or skinny marink and skinner maringa and things like that. But basically, it comes from the idea that someone is as thin as the link in a chain.
Oh, like a link.
Yeah, so you’re just straight and thin, and that’s it. That’s all there is to you. That’s pretty thin. And I’m not surprised that you grew up in Levittown, because according to the Dictionary of American Regional English, it’s especially located in New York in this country. The neighborhood I grew up in was principally Italian and Irish. So how she would, oh, she grew up in Far Rockaway, actually, which may have been more diverse. I have, you know, no memory. I know all my relatives lived on the same street that she lived on, but that she would have, you know, come to use a Scottish word, that seems kind of strange to me.
Well, I mean, people borrow out some, obviously, she speaks English, as do you, which are outside your cultural heritage, right? So if you got that language, you might bring other words in as well from the people around you.
Okay. I guess that tells the whole story. But again, there’s tons of information in the Dictionary of the Scots language online. Check it out. It’s a great dictionary to browse around, and you will be surprised what you find there and how familiar and friendly some of it seems, even if it’s not language that you use every day.
Okay. Great. Cool. Thanks for calling.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
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