artificial skin
1
4.4
- noun
- /ˌɑːrtɪˈfɪʃəl skɪn/
- Specialized
:
piel artificial
- In 1996, a patient with severe burns over 60 percent of his body was treated in San Diego, California, with artificial skin.
Examples
-
Surgeons used artificial skin to help the burn victim recover and improve her quality of life.
-
"You're developing an artificial skin," he said.
Fiction book (1994) -
Artificial skin is a prime example.
Academic text (1999) -
The doctor applied artificial skin to the burn areas to promote healing and protect them from infection.
-
After the accident, the patient received artificial skin to cover the severely burned parts of his body.
Antonyms
How Natural
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound 'artificial skin' is directly and predictably interpreted as a man-made imitation of bodily skin by combining 'artificial' (man-made/imitation) + 'skin' (body covering); a B1 learner who knows both words can infer it's a synthetic skin-like material. Specific technical details (e.g. sensors, use on robots or prosthetics) are pragmatic extensions of that basic meaning but do not undermine the clear compositional relation, which is common across languages.
Etymology
Artificial skin is a name that creates a simple image: a man-made layer that acts like real skin. The words artificial ('made by people') and skin ('the body's outer layer') show it was designed to 'replace' or 'cover' damaged skin, so today it means a material used instead of real skin.