Meaning & Analysis
To attempt to skin a piece of flint—a stone with no skin—implies going to absurd or impossible lengths to extract value, even where none exists.
Insights
Extreme Stinginess
The proverb characterizes a person so miserly or tight-fisted that they would try to get something even from the most unyielding, barren, or valueless source.
Futility of Excessive Greed
It warns of the futility and absurdity of pushing thrift or economy to extremes, often to the point of self-defeating behavior.
Historical Symbolism
Flint, being a hard, inanimate stone, was proverbial for its resistance to yielding anything of use beyond its intended function. The proverb uses this impossibility to highlight the lengths to which misers might go in their quest for gain.
Cultural Resonance
The phrase appears alongside other expressions for miserliness and parsimony—'to shave a whetstone,' 'to flay a louse for the skin,' 'he will not part with the parings of his nails'—all ridiculing extreme frugality and penny-pinching.
Psychological Dimensions
It points to an obsessive or compulsive relationship with resources, suggesting that pathological miserliness blinds a person to the point of absurdity, undermining both practicality and reputation.
Rhetorical Devices
Hyperbole
The exaggerated image of flaying a stone emphasizes the extremity of the miser’s efforts, making the proverb memorable and colorful.
Metaphor
Skinned flint serves as a metaphor for any situation where value is wrung from the utterly valueless or unyielding.
Colloquialism
The vivid, earthy language roots the proverb in everyday speech, making it especially biting as a criticism of character.
Transcription
Quotations
Some of them were so strict that they would flea a flint.
To skin a stone for a peny, and break a knife of twelvepence.
He will shave a whetstone.
He would flay a flint, or flay a groat.
He'll flay a Flint, of a meer Scrat or Miser.
Cross References
Annotations
- Spoken of a covetous person.
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
Used under CC BY-NC 3.0.