Etymology

skinship

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Today it means: Bonding through physical (touch, skin-to-skin) contact; particularly between family members, relatives and loved ones. Full definition →

English skin
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The story

  1. English · derived fromskin
  2. English todayskinship

Phono-semantic matching of Japanese スキンシップ (sukinshippu), itself a wasei eigo (和製英語; pseudo-anglicism) derived from English skin + -ship, or as a blend from English skin + kinship. It is first recorded in English in 1966 according to the OED. In Japanese, this form was also observed in the Latin script as early as 1955.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.