By the Skin of Your Teeth

Traces directly to the Book of Job in the Bible: "My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth" (Job 19:20). It's a deliberately absurd image, since teeth famously have no skin at all, meant to convey having survived with literally nothing left to spare. The phrase entered English through the Geneva Bible in 1560 and was carried forward into the King James Version in 1611, from which it passed into everyday speech.