to skin pop

1 9.9

To put drugs under the skin instead of into a vein

phrasal verb

NSFW

: inyectar bajo la piel

He preferred to skin pop rather than inject the drugs directly into his veins.

Examples

She learned about the risks of skin pop injections during her drug rehabilitation program.
One last popular method involves "skin popping," or injecting the drugs subcutaneously, which may also be performed in the neck region.

Academic text (1996)
His pale arms are knotted with muscle up to the puckered hollows of his shoulders, where the tissue is damaged from skin-popping drugs.

Fiction book (1994)
Many users resort to skin popping because it is less painful than intravenous methods.

Synonyms

to inject

vsto skin pop

150 4.4

Force liquid or gas into something, often into the body with a needle

targets just under the outer body layer rather than general body injection

Surface Forms

skin pop infinitive

skin popped past

skin popped past participle

skin popping present participle

skins pop third person singular

Morphology

skin + pop

The element 'skin' clearly indicates location under the skin, so learners can infer a topical relation to the body part, but the verb 'pop' at B1 does not reliably mean 'inject'—it is slangy and semantically variable (burst, go quickly, put). Because part of the meaning (location) is derivable but the crucial action sense (to inject under the skin) depends on slang knowledge, the expression is only partially predictable to a learner who knows the constituents.

Etymology

The verb skin pop comes from the real image of putting a needle just under the skin, where the drug can make a small soft bump or blister that looks like a 'pop'. That's why skin pop means 'to inject drugs just beneath the skin rather than into a vein or muscle'.