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beauty is only skin deep. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
beauty is only skin deep, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
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English
Alternative forms
Etymology
1600s.
Proverb
beauty is only skin deep
- What matters is a person's character, rather than their appearance.
1910, O. Henry [pseudonym; William Sydney Porter], “The Girl and the Habit”, in Strictly Business:And she graced the transition. Beauty is only skin-deep, but the nerves lie very near to the skin. Nerve—but just here will you oblige by perusing again the quotation with which this story begins?
2014 September 25, Hugo Macdonald, “Could those utopian hoardings for new developments get any more nauseating?”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:Isn’t it time the marketing budgets were reapportioned to the bones and muscles of the building themselves? At present, the beauty in London’s building boom is barely skin deep.
Translations
a person's character is more important than their outward appearance
See also
References
- Gregory Y. Titelman, Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings, 1996, →ISBN, p. 21.
Further reading
- “beauty is only skin deep”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.
- Jennifer Speake, editor (2015), “BEAUTY is only skin-deep”, in Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, 6th edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 15.