Trench foot - goose skin

boron

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In my language, "goose skin" is a proper medical term to describe a trench foot (white, thick, wrinkled, soft skin after prolonged immersion to water). Is there any related synonym, such as goose skin, chicken skin or duck skin used in English? I'm not talking about goose bumps.
 

Duncan J Macdonald

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I've heard it called 'immersion foot', which my podiatrist called a very mild case I had when I was in college. Generally, I believe most English speakers would understand 'trench foot' just by itself.
 

boron

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Yes, I know the term immersion foot. I think I've heard about goose skin, but can't find anything convincing in Google. The term is also used for wrinkled fingers after dishwashing and such.
 

melindamusil

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Boron- is your story set in a particular time or place? I know trench foot was a major problem during world war I, and people since then would pretty much recognize what it is/was.
 

boron

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Naah, I intended to use it in a health article about numbness, since it is quite descriptive...

Obviously, in English, goose skin means goose bumps.
 
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books2thesky

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The milder version that you get on your fingertips and toes after swimming/bathing/etc is often called "pruney fingers"/"fingers turning into prunes" or "raisin fingers" after the wrinkled skin of raisins and dried prunes. You could write in your article that "the skin on a trench foot is like a severe case of prune fingers" or "imagine if instead of just your fingertips turning into prunes, your entire foot became wrinkled" ... or something like that.

edited to add: "pruney fingers" is not a proper medical term, though; as far as I know it's just a colloquial term.
 
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boron

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Excellent! Google considers pruney fingers and pruned fingertips as synonyms for wrinkled finger(tips). Raisin fingers are also popular...

According to this experiment, water immersion causes narrowing of the arteries in the fingertips which..according to one explanation...results in shrinking of the deep layers of the skin (dermis), which in turn results in relaxing and thus wrinkling of the upper skin layer (epidermis).
 

cornflake

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Naah, I intended to use it in a health article about numbness, since it is quite descriptive...

Obviously, in English, goose skin means goose bumps.

I think your problem (though it seems as if you solved it a different way), is using 'goose skin.' Goose bumps I've heard referred to as 'goose flesh' but never skin. It doesn't refer to that water-logged thing though, just goose bumps.
 

boron

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Yes, I mixed up few things; goose skin is not related to wrinkled skin, but it is, along with goose flesh and chicken skin, used as a synonym for goose bumps.