beauty is only skin deep
English
editAlternative forms
editEtymology
editFirst use appears c. 1809, although beauty is but skin-deep appears much earlier.
Proverb
edit- A person's character matters more than their appearance.
- Synonym: beauty is but skin-deep
- 1809, Francis Lathom, London, Or, Truth Without Treason, A Novel, page 2:
- "Handsome those that handsome do say I; beauty is only skin deep; it is the principle of the heart I consider.
- 2014 September 25, Hugo Macdonald, “Could those utopian hoardings for new developments get any more nauseating?”, in The Guardian[2], →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
edita person's character is more important than their outward appearance
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See also
editReferences
edit- Gregory Y. Titelman, Random House Dictionary of Popular Proverbs and Sayings, 1996, →ISBN, p. 21.
Further reading
edit- “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.