skinning table (skiningta"bl)

A taxidermists' table, provided with appliances for skinning and stuffing objects of natural history. With such precautions as these, birds most liable to be soiled reach the skinning - table in perfect order. Coues, Key to N. A. Birds (1884), p. 18. skinny (skin'i), a. [ And [it cureth] the bones charged with purulent and skinny matter. Holland, tr. of Pliny, xxiii., Proeme. Our ministers,. like a seething pot set to cool, sensibly exhale and reak out the greatest part of that zeal and those gifts which were formerly in them, settling in a skinny congealment of ease and sloth at the top. Milton, Reformation in Eng., i. 2. Tough and firm or dense, but not hard: as, the skinny covering of a bird's beak: distinguished from horny. What is most remarkable in these [whistling ducks) is that the end of their beaks is soft, and of a skinny, or, more properly, cartilaginous substance. Cook , Second Voyage, i. 5. 3. Characterized by skinnine ; showing skin with little appearance of flesh under it; lean; emaciated. You seem to understand me, By each at once her choppy finger laying Upon her skinny lips. Shak ., Macbeth, i. 3. 45. I fear thee, ancient mariner, I fear thy skinny hand. Cole ridge, Ancient Mariner, iv. 4. Miserly; stingy; mean. Compare skin, n., 7. [Colloq.] As a rule, the whole of the men in a factory would contribute, and skinny ones were not let off easily. Lancet, 1890, II. 246.