Aside from the literal outer layer of the ray-finned slippery fish, this evocative, slightly suggestive 19th-century slang means very tight trousers, while this week’s bonus word, excruciators, points to the experience of wearing very tight shoes. Eel-skins is actually a term in the English language since 1560 with other meanings, including “formerly used as a casing for the cue or pigtail of the hair or the wig, especially by sailors,” as well as someone who is slippery and a bit of a cheat at card games.
But lt’s slip straight into the trouser reference, and while some trousers were indeed made from the strong skin of an eel, the tightness aspect is applied to any material with such a fit. Here’s a reference from 1827, by the English writer and politician Edward Bulwer-Lytton and his most famous novel Pelham, an intimate portrayal of pre-Victorian dandyism, which sold well and kept readers and gossipers busy trying to associate public figures with characters in the book. Here in Chapter XLIX (44) Page 190: “He only filched a twopenny halfpenny gilt chain out of his master, Levy, the pawnbroker's window, and stuck it in his eel-skin to make a show.”
Pelham: Adventures of A Gentleman by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1827
Victorian mens' attire at times embraced the tight look ...
But through any area of mens attire and back to the present day, and tight trousers come and go in fashion, including the skinny jeans of recent years, which are now receding. The top picture of regular mates Kevin Rooney, Alex Lacey, Jamie Phillips and Connor Humpage was taken before they enjoyed a night out in 2019, but went viral the year after after circulating on social media, becoming a popular meme. But then some years later, a local Birmingham artist, calling themselves Tat Vision, unveiled a statue of “four lads in jeans” tribute outside Birmingham New Street station in the same spot as the original photo. Is this satirical, serious or an affectionate tribute? It certainly adds to the eel-skin meaning and excruciator element a little more:
Another word Victorian slang phrase, runs parallel - gas pipes (perhaps later related to 1960s drain pipe trousers). But what of eel-skins in song. Going to a different era and style, here’s LA rapper Snoop Dogg, also known for his stylish attire, but from his earlier days, and from his second album, in 1996 album The Doggfather, and gangster scene hip hop number, Snoop Bounce, which also picks up on the eel-skins …
Killing up crews, give em the real street blues
Have em sliding in their eel-skins, grooving in their tennis shoes…
Here then are a few other appropriately tight attire songs, beginning this member of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band:
Fancy squeezing in a few more suggestions on eel-skin-type tightness? Feel free to share anything more in relation to anything whether in music or wider culture, such as from film, art, or other contexts, in comments below.
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