Short answer: the skeleton in the closet origin is British and early 19th century. Both The Phrase Finder and Worldwide Words trace it to a review in the Eclectic Review of November 1816, where the hidden "skeleton" stood for a hereditary disease a family would rather conceal. The novelist William Makepeace Thackeray helped make it popular from 1845. "Closet" came first; the British "cupboard" version appears by 1858. Today Americans say "skeleton in the closet" and most Britons say "skeleton in the cupboard." The body-snatching doctor story is not supported by evidence.
Closet vs cupboard at a glance
| Skeleton in the closet | Skeleton in the cupboard | |
|---|---|---|
| Main region | United States (and the original British form) | United Kingdom |
| Meaning | A hidden, embarrassing secret | Same |
| Register | Neutral, usable in most writing | Neutral |
| Earliest date found | November 1816, Eclectic Review | October 1858, Morning Post (Worldwide Words) |
| Common shapes | "skeletons in the closet," "a skeleton in his closet" | "skeletons in the cupboard," "a skeleton in the family cupboard" |
Both versions are alive and both are neutral in register. A newspaper can use either in a headline without sounding slangy.
What the phrase means
A skeleton in the closet is a secret, usually a shameful or damaging one, that a person or family keeps hidden. The Phrase Finder defines it as a concealed secret that could do harm if revealed. It is most often used about personal history: an old scandal, a past crime, a family matter.
- "Every candidate gets vetted, in case there are skeletons in the closet."
- "It turned out the company had a skeleton in the cupboard: an unpaid tax bill from ten years ago."
The phrase usually comes in the plural ("skeletons") and often with a verb of discovery: skeletons come out, are dug up or are found.
The skeleton in the closet origin: what the dated sources say
The references agree on the date and the setting, and differ slightly on who wrote the words.
Worldwide Words (Michael Quinion). Quinion's entry on "skeleton in the closet," which we read on September 27, 2026, quotes this line: "cautions on cautions are multiplied, to conceal the skeleton in the closet or to prevent its escape." He attributes the words to Joseph Adams's A Philosophical Treatise on the Hereditary Peculiarities of the Human Race (1815), as quoted in a review by an anonymous physician in the Eclectic Review of November 1816.
The Phrase Finder (Gary Martin). The Phrase Finder's page on the phrase, also read on September 27, 2026, gives the same 1816 Eclectic Review as its earliest example and names the writer as William Hendry Stowell. Its quotation reads: "The dread of being the cause of misery to posterity has prevailed over men to conceal the skeleton in the closet."
Wikipedia. Wikipedia's article says only that the phrase "is known to have been used as a phrase as early as at least November 1816," citing volume 6 of the Eclectic Review.
So the place and date line up: a medical discussion in a British review in late 1816. What does not quite line up is the credit. Quinion reads the key sentence as a quotation from Adams's 1815 book; The Phrase Finder credits the reviewer. If Quinion is right, the words were in print in 1815. We give 1816 as the safe date because that is the one all three sources support.
The context matters too. In this earliest use, the skeleton was not a murder victim or a stolen corpse. It stood for inherited illness, something families hid for fear of what it meant for their children. The phrase began as a metaphor for a family secret and has stayed one.
Thackeray's part: popularizer, not inventor
Many pages credit Thackeray with the phrase. The dates show he did not coin it, but he did help spread it.
Both Worldwide Words and The Phrase Finder quote Thackeray writing in Punch in 1845: "There is a skeleton in every house." Note the wording: "house," not "closet." A decade later, in The Newcomes (1854 to 1855), he used the full image. Worldwide Words quotes the line as "they have a skeleton or two in their closets, as well as their neighbours."
The Phrase Finder says the idiom was widely adopted into the language thanks to Thackeray's popular writing. That is a fair way to put it: 1816 is the first print record, and Thackeray is the reason a Victorian reader would have known the phrase.
Why Britain switched to "cupboard"
The regional split is the part the quick-answer pages rarely explain.
Worldwide Words says the earliest example of the cupboard version that Quinion could find is in the Morning Post in October 1858, followed by a book titled The Skeleton in the Cupboard by Lady Harriet Anne Scott in 1860.
Why the change? Both references point to the same likely cause. During the 19th century, "closet" in Britain became tied to the "water closet," the WC. Quinion says the word likely became unsuitable for polite conversation for that reason, and The Phrase Finder says "closet" became chiefly associated with the lavatory. "Cupboard" was the safe replacement.
American English kept "closet," where it still means a small room or cabinet for storage, especially clothes. So the split is not about the idiom at all. It is about what the word "closet" came to suggest in each country.
One more wrinkle: Quinion notes "the partial shift back towards closet in the UK seems to be the result of American influence." You will hear both forms in Britain today.
The body-snatcher story does not hold up
The most repeated folk origin says that before Britain's Anatomy Act of 1832, doctors could not legally obtain bodies for dissection, so they hid the skeletons of illegally obtained corpses in cupboards. A second story says the phrase recalls murder victims hidden in houses.
Both references reject these. The Phrase Finder says there is no evidence to support the anatomists theory. Worldwide Words lists both stories as folklore. The earliest example also points the other way: in 1816 the skeleton was a figure for inherited disease, not a real body anyone had hidden.
Death stories attach easily to idioms. The same thing happened with dead ringer and the buried-alive bell story, which also turns out to be invented after the fact. For how researchers separate a dated source from a good tale, see our explainer on how a phrase origin is traced.
Related phrases: out of the closet
The Phrase Finder notes that the related expressions "come out of the closet" and "come out" emerged during the 1960s. These share the image of the closet as a hiding place but have their own history and meaning, and they are not variants of the skeleton idiom.
Which should you use?
Choose the form your reader expects.
- American readers: "skeletons in the closet." "Cupboard" will be understood but will sound British.
- British readers: "skeletons in the cupboard" is the traditional form. "Closet" is increasingly common and will not surprise anyone.
- ESL learners and international audiences: "skeletons in the closet" is probably the more familiar form because of American media. That is our judgment, not a measured figure.
- Formal writing: acceptable in journalism, reports and speeches. It is figurative but not slangy. In legal or technical writing, name the secret instead.
The phrase is not dated. It is in steady use, especially in politics and business reporting. Like bury the hatchet, a phrase with a documented history, it has a clear paper trail that makes the folk stories unnecessary.
Frequently asked questions
What is the origin of "skeleton in the closet"?
It first appears in print in the British Eclectic Review in November 1816, where the hidden skeleton stood for a hereditary disease. Worldwide Words says the words were quoted from Joseph Adams's 1815 treatise; The Phrase Finder credits the reviewer, William Hendry Stowell.
Did Thackeray invent "skeleton in the closet"?
No. He helped popularize it. He wrote "There is a skeleton in every house" in Punch in 1845 and used "skeleton or two in their closets" in The Newcomes in 1854 to 1855, decades after the 1816 example.
Is it "skeleton in the closet" or "skeleton in the cupboard"?
Both are correct. "Closet" is American and was the original form; "cupboard" is the usual British form, found from 1858.
Why do British people say "cupboard"?
Worldwide Words and The Phrase Finder both suggest that "closet" came to suggest the water closet, or toilet, in 19th-century Britain, so "cupboard" replaced it.
Did doctors really hide skeletons in closets?
There is no evidence linking the phrase to anatomists hiding illegal skeletons. The Phrase Finder says there is no evidence for it, and Worldwide Words treats it as folklore.
