The skin of a snake, especially after it has been made into leather for shoes, bags, belts, or boots. Used as a noun for the material ("a bag made of snakeskin") and, very often, right in front of another noun to describe a thing: snakeskin boots, a snakeskin jacket. Here is the part learners miss: it very frequently means "looking like snakeskin" rather than actually being it, because the pattern — small scales, repeating diamonds — is printed on ordinary leather, plastic, or cloth. So snakeskin shoes in a shop window are usually not from a snake at all. The look carries a strong flavour in English: showy, expensive, a bit dangerous, slightly old-fashioned glamour — rock singers, gangsters in films, 1970s fashion. So calling clothes snakeskin says something about style, not just material. There is a second, everyday meaning too: the dry empty skin a snake leaves behind when it grows, which children find in the grass. For that, people also say a shed skin or a snake skin as two words.