Sep 24, 2025
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Dear Etymology Corner - When you get those little raised bumps on your arm, I've referred to them as "goose pimples". Apparently there are some who refer to them as "goose bumps". Can you explain the difference?
Goosebumps, goose pimples, and gooseflesh are bumps that appear on the skin when one is aroused, afraid, excited, or cold. Scientific terms for this phenomenon are cutis anserina, piloerection, and horripilation.
The etymology for the terms goosebumps, goose pimples, and gooseflesh is easy to understand. They are comparisons to a plucked goose. A small bump remains when a feather is removed from the poultry skin. Most languages have a term that compares piloerection to some type of bird flesh. In Dutch and Finnish, it is chicken skin. In Japan, it is a more generic bird skin.
The term has been used in various forms through the centuries, possibly traced back to the 1400s as hen-flesh, although pinpointing that source has been difficult. Goose’s skin was used as early as 1744. Gooseflesh became popular in the early 1800s with the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge referring to it in his poem, Rime of the Ancient Mariner:
It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek Like a meadow-gale of spring— It mingled strangely with my fears, Yet it felt like a welcoming.
When I first started looking into these words my first thought was that it was regional - North/South or East/West, but these maps disprove that thought. Goose pimples and goosebumps are used in the same areas of the country, just in different concentrations. The only regional difference I see is that "chill bumps" is mostly used in the South.
"It gives me love bumps down my spine when you smile as the sun shines, cause that's double the warmth and triple the light.."
It gives me goosebumps the way you touch my soul, if so didn't give you my heart.. I would be such a fool - eUë
Goose bumps/goose flesh/ goose pimples- when your hair stands up cause you’re afraid thrilled or cold. I’ve listed the names in order of how common they are. Interestingly enough which one of these you use has very little to do with where you’re from.
Chill bumps/ chilly bumps- this is definitely a southern US, Texas thing.
La chair de poule- French name for it (‘chicken flesh’)
