Skinny

Skinny meaning thin or emaciated dates from the 1600s. Skinny meaning inside information or the real truth, is American and dates from the late 1950s, as in what’s the skinny? A guess, and it’s only a guess, this latter meaning might have connections to the naked truth and expressions like skinny dip, which also implies nakedness. More recently, from the late 1980s, ‘skinnies’ is US military slang for Somali insurgents, deriving from their physical appearance, frequently used in the Ridley Scott movie Black Hawk Down (2001).