skint

comparative skinter · comparative more skint · superlative skintest · superlative most skint

1. CommonwealthIrelandalsoinformalHaving insufficient or no money; broke, penniless.First known use early 20th c.

   I'm afraid we're skint, we were awfully cheated by Mario who left everything for us to pay.

   1989, Iris Murdoch, “Part Six”, in The Message to the Planet, London: Chatto & Windus, →ISBN, page 484

   5 more examples

   The Room of that there 'Arold Pinter / Ain't one as I'd care to come inter! / 'Is blokes are grotesquer / Than them 'uns of Wesker, / They're balmier, mate, an' they're skinter!

   1960 December 24, Dera Cooper, “Week-end competition”, in New Statesman: The Week-end Review, volume LX, number 1554, London: New Statesman, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 1018, column 3

   There were a mixture of local people with cold, pinched faces and skint and harassed looking tourists sitting around fondling their itchsome facial hair, their tongues lolling into fizzy yellow pints of lager.

   2000, Tim Bradford, “Dublin, Fair City of Vikings, Buskers and Soaring House Prices (and the Celtic Tiger is rather Unimaginatively Mentioned too): Twenty-four Quietish Hours in Dublin”, in Is Shane MacGowan Still Alive? Travels in Irishry, London: Flamingo, HarperCollinsPublishers, published 2001, →ISBN, page 68

   Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere, and the skintest bit of the poorest country in the western hemisphere is Cité Soleil, a sprawling slum of 250,000 God-and-mammon-forsaken souls on the seashore at the edge of the capital, Port-au-Prince.

   2004 March 14, A[drian] A[nthony] Gill, “Life and death on the troubled streets of Haiti”, in The Times, London: News UK, →ISSN, →OCLC; republished in “Haiti”, in Previous Convictions: Assignments from Here and There, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006, →ISBN, page 107

   Mr Grave proceeded to give a stern warning to those "errant pupils" who, against the rules, had been smuggling their mobile phones into school. This was just about everyone, though Zoe was far too skint to even dream of ever owning one.

   2012, David Walliams [pseudonym; David Edward Williams], “Animal Smuggling”, in Ratburger, London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, →ISBN, pages 79–80

   About 2–3 weeks prior to Emma Finch's death you told two^([sic – meaning one?]) of your friends Abi that "he hoped his Nan died soon because he was skint … and … that he thought he was the only one getting money in the will when she died".

   2025 November 14, [Michael] Bowes, judge of the Portsmouth Crown Court, “The King v Joshua Powell: Sentencing Remarks”, in Courts and Tribunals Judiciary [United Kingdom], archived from the original on 26 Nov 2025, paragraph 19

   Synonyms: boracic[Cockney rhyming slang]]>, boracic lint[Cockney rhyming slang]]>, impecunious, poor, almsless, arm, badly off, bankrupt · Antonyms: bow-legged wi' brass, comfortably off, filthy rich, loaded, fat, minted, moneyed, moneybags

1. USparticiplepastregionalsimple past and past participle of skin (alternative form of skinned).