means Thin, dry, and brittle like paper — describing skin, leaves, or any surface that feels delicate and crackly to the touch.

from From "paper" plus the adjective-forming "-y," the same suffix that turns "glass" into "glassy" and "silk" into "silky." "Paper" itself traces back through Old French "papier" to Latin "papyrus," the Nile reed the ancients pounded into writing sheets — so a word for fragile skin still carries the ghost of a riverbank plant flattened thousands of years ago.