skinny
skinny – aggettivo
These ankle boots would go with everything from skinny jeans to a skirt.
My favourite skinny pants are from J Brand Jeans.
I’ve had girls pulling my skinny tie on more than one occasion.
My order of skinny latte and chocolate orange muffin were the perfect combination.
Why would I want skinny legs? I prefer shapely.
The dad was a tall skinny guy with glasses.
The caul is the skinny membrane that covers the head of some babies.
Di recente l’aggettivo skinny ha assunto un nuovo significato che va ad aggiungersi a quelli esistenti esemplificati dalle frasi qui sopra. I notiziari hanno ben documentato i ripetuti tentativi dei Repubblicani statunitensi di abrogare e rimpiazzare l’Affordable Care Act, cioè la legge che garantisce la copertura sanitaria a milioni di cittadini americani, una riforma fortemente voluta da Obama e perciò soprannominata Obamacare: lo smacco più recente ha visto fallire il passaggio al Senato di una versione ridotta dell’abrogazione dell’Obamacare, subito definita ‘skinny repeal’:
Trump’s hardball tactics backfire as ‘skinny repeal’ goes down.
Senate Republicans failed to pass a ‘skinny repeal’ bill, which was their last-ditch effort to dismantle Obamacare.
The so-called “skinny repeal” amendment the Senate voted on today would not accomplish those goals.
Il termine è così nuovo (come dimostrano le virgolette) che molto spesso è accompagnato dalla spiegazione del significato, cioè ‘narrow’, ‘limited’, ‘restricted’. È probabile che circoli da un po’ nel linguaggio politico, ma solo ora è entrato in quello di tutti i giorni: resta da vedere se riuscirà a guadagnarsi un posto permanente o se finirà nel dimenticatoio, come tanti altri termini assurti alle cronache sulla scia di avvenimenti pubblici.
Origini del termine
Skinny viene da skin più il suffisso -y. Il significato di ‘thin’, cioè magro, risale almeno ai tempi di Shakespeare, che l’ha usato nel Macbeth, mentre quello di ‘di pelle, come pelle’, oggi usato raramente, è ancora più antico. Tutti gli altri significati sono molto più recenti.
skinny – adjective
These ankle boots would go with everything from skinny jeans to a skirt.
My favourite skinny pants are from J Brand Jeans.
I’ve had girls pulling my skinny tie on more than one occasion.
My order of skinny latte and chocolate orange muffin were the perfect combination.
Why would I want skinny legs? I prefer shapely.
The dad was a tall skinny guy with glasses.
The caul is the skinny membrane that covers the head of some babies.
The adjective skinny seems to have acquired a new meaning lately to add to the well-known existing ones illustrated above. The news has been full of attempts by US Republicans to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, each of which has failed in its turn. The most recent attempt to get a pared down law through the Senate was widely referred to as the ‘skinny repeal’:
Trump’s hardball tactics backfire as ‘skinny repeal’ goes down.
Senate Republicans failed to pass a ‘skinny repeal’ bill, which was their last-ditch effort to dismantle Obamacare.
The so-called “skinny repeal” amendment the Senate voted on today would not accomplish those goals.
The term is so new (as indicated by the inverted commas that enclose it in most reports) that most accounts also include an explanation of what it means, which seems to be simply ‘narrow’, ‘limited’, ‘restricted’. While the term may have been around in political circles for a while, it has only now entered the mainstream. It remains to be seen whether it will hang around or be consigned to the linguistic dustbin, like so many terms that shoot to prominence as a result of public events.
Origins
Skinny comes from the noun skin with the suffix -y. The ‘thin’ meaning goes back at least as far as Shakespeare, who uses it in Macbeth, while the ‘resembling or consisting of skin’ meaning, which is rarely used nowadays, is even older. The other meanings are much more recent.
