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skin alive
Punish severely, as in If I find the guy who slashed my tire I'll skin him alive. This hyperbolic expression transfers the barbaric practice of flaying a live prisoner to other forms of punishment. [Colloquial mid-1800s]
Example Sentences
Baxley looked at him and then looked back at me and said, “The rangers didn’t want those Indians. It’s John here they wanted to skin alive.”
I give thee, Bird, advice; If thou wouldst save thy skin alive, Let me not warn thee twice, "Grack-grack-grack-grack-grack-grack— Go on and ne'er look back!"
Tell your daughters," he said, "that we will skin alive any girl we find with an American.
And again he was reported to have, with unrelenting temper, represented to his friends in secret council, that, “It was for our safety not to spare one white skin alive.”
Better fight dan be skin alive!”
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