skin a cat—
1. (coll.) be a miser; spend as little as possible (also: skin a flint):
- She was very economical and wasted nothing, some said, “she would skin a cat for its hide and tallow.”
2. accomplish smth. (in allusion to the saying “there’s more than one way to skin a cat”):
- “The poster of Lenin is not a political statement,” he assures students, “just a reminder that there are many views of how to skin a cat.”
skin the cat—(U.S.) perform a gymnastic exercise involving passing the legs between the arms while hanging by the hands:
- Some trees linger in our memories as old friends, from whose branches we have swung and “skinned-the-cat.”