Getting the Skinny on “the Skinny” Meaning “the Details”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Brian. I’m from Dallas, Texas.

The word that my grandma always used was, like, give me the skinny, or what’s the skinny on that? And she’s from New Jersey, but she always used it in a way where she was meaning to give me all the details, which I always found interesting. Like, she never wanted me to leave anything out when she said that. And I would have thought that it would be the opposite to mean just give me the facts and don’t give me any of the fluff.

So I don’t, one, know if she was using it wrong. And then I’m also kind of curious on where it exactly comes from.

So you thought it might have something to do with your grandma’s connection to New Jersey, but it’s deeper than that. Unless she had some experience maybe in the military?

She didn’t. Her husband did.

Which branch did he serve in?

He was in the Air Force.

Air Force. About when, do you think?

About to be 50 years ago.

Okay. 70s then. 60s.

Yeah.

Okay. So a lot of work has been done looking into the skinny to mean information or details by the members of the American Dialect Society email list, particularly Stephen Granson and Ben Zimmer. And I did some more work looking into this on my own. It’s just kind of every once in a while an expression like the skinny will catch the fancy of word researchers and they just can’t leave it alone. And this is one of those terms that they just keep going back to. And I kind of get it.

It’s something about that definite article in front of it. The skinny just makes it like why the skinny or why not some skinny or a bit of skinny. And so you feel like there should be a particular skinny out there. And right now, the prevailing theory is that it comes from the U.S. Naval Academy. Because as far back as the 1890s, there is in the yearbooks for the Naval Academy, skinny referring to the physics and chemistry department.

And let me explain why this theory seems to hold water. You’ll find in these yearbooks again and again, student bios or profiles referring to students having problems mastering the details of studying for physics and chemistry. And they’ll talk about having problems in the skinny. Or one student in 1932 is described as having a skirmish with the skinny department, meaning having difficulty passing classes there. And at the same time, in that same yearbook, in that same year, a profile of another student says, if you don’t get the skinny of things, Eddie can usually set you right.

So here in the same yearbook in 1932, we see skinny used in pretty much the same way that we’d use it today. In 1913, in that same series of yearbooks from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, there’s a glossary in the back of it where the skinny is defined as a midshipman’s slender knowledge of the laws and principles of physics. And so that whole idea about it being knowledge really seems to be a forerunner of the way we use the skinny today.

What do you think about that?

I mean, that makes a lot of sense and it’s fascinating. So that’s just kind of the beginning of it. That’s the birth of it. By the 1930s, it starts popping up in things like the novels of Richard Matthews Hallett, actually appeared in his autobiography, where he wrote stories about life at sea. But he also spent some time on a Navy battleship with the Secretary of the Navy in 1928, even going to Honolulu. And he uses the skinny a couple of times in that book in 1938, 10 years later.

And then by the time World War II comes around, boom, the skinny, and especially as the phrase, the straight skinny, is everywhere in the mouths of soldiers. And it’s starting to appear in lists and glossaries of soldier slang and sailor slang, meaning things like the straight dope or the naked truth.

Right. Interesting. Well, that makes a lot of sense.

Yeah.

And that answer wasn’t skinny. That’s the skinny on the skinny.

Well thank you I appreciate it.

Yeah sure thanks for calling and sharing your family stories and I’m glad to hear that there was some military backing back there because I am sure that they’re like Lego bricks there’s some connection there that your family story plugs into this story and that’s probably where the skinny entered into your family’s lore.

Yeah definitely well thank you for having me on I love what you guys do.

Thank you alright take care bye bye.

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