Join free

flesh

AI In plain words

Writing a short explanation…

Written by a house AI from the entry below, in your language. The entry itself is the source.

flesh

  • /flɛʃ/

Rhymes with -ɛʃ

Where it comes from

From Middle English flesh, flesch, flæsch, from Old English flǣsċ, from Proto-West Germanic *flaiski, from Proto-Germanic *flaiski, from Proto-Indo-European *pleh₁ḱ- (“to tear, peel off”).

Cognates

Cognate with Yola vleash, vlesh (“flesh”), North Frisian flaasch, flaosk, Fleesk, fleäsk, floask, flääsk, flååsch (“flesh, meat”), Saterland Frisian Flaask (“flesh, meat”), West Frisian fleis (“flesh, meat”), Cimbrian blòas, vlaisch, vlòas (“flesh, meat”), Dutch vlees, vleesch (“flesh, meat”), German Fleisch (“flesh, meat”), German Low German and Luxembourgish Fleesch (“flesh, meat”), Vilamovian fłaś (“meat; muscle”), Yiddish פֿלייש (fleysh, “flesh, meat”), Danish flæsk (“pork; bacon”), Faroese, Icelandic, and Norwegian Nynorsk flesk (“pork; bacon”), Swedish fläsk (“pork”).

noun fleshes

  1. uncountable, usually The soft tissue of the body, especially muscle and fat. The flesh of chicken, fowl, and turkey has much shorter fibre than that of ruminating animals, and is not intermingled with fat,—the fat always being found in layers directly under the skin, and surrounding the intestines.
  2. uncountable, usually The skin of a human or animal.
  3. broadly, uncountable, usually Bare arms, bare legs, bare torso.
  4. uncountable, usually Animal tissue regarded as food; meat (but sometimes excluding fish). Thenne syr launcelot sayd / fader what shalle I do / Now sayd the good man / I requyre yow take this hayre that was this holy mans and putte it nexte thy skynne / and it shalle preuaylle the gretely / syr and I wille doo hit sayd sir launcelot / Also I charge you that ye ete no flesshe as longe as y
  5. uncountable, usually The human body as a physical entity. And the preaſt ſhall put on his lynen albe and his lynen breches apon his fleſh, and take awaye the aſſhes whiche the fire of the burntſacrifice in the altare hath made, and put them beſyde the alter, […]
  6. uncountable, usually The mortal body of a human being, contrasted with the spirit or soul. For all flesh is as grasse, and all the glory of man as the flowre of grasse: the grasse withereth, and the flowre thereof falleth away.
  7. uncountable, usually The evil and corrupting principle working in man.
  8. uncountable, usually The soft, often edible, parts of fruits or vegetables. The flesh of black walnuts was a protein-packed winter food carefully hoarded in tall, stilted buildings.
  9. obsolete, uncountable, usually Tenderness of feeling; gentleness. There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart.
  10. obsolete, uncountable, usually Kindred; stock; race. He is our brother and our flesh.
  11. uncountable, usually A yellowish pink color; the color of some Caucasian human skin. She opened [...] a third that was the peachy white that crayon companies used to call “flesh”.

verb fleshes · fleshing · fleshed

  1. transitive To reward (a hound, bird of prey etc.) with flesh of the animal killed, to excite it for further hunting; to train (an animal) to have an appetite for flesh. Before they had fleshed the hounds, however, he recollected himself […].
  2. transitive To bury (something, especially a weapon) in flesh. Give me a clean sword and a clean foe to flesh it in.
  3. obsolete To inure or habituate someone in or to a given practice. And whosoever could now joyne us together, and eagerly flesh all our people to a common enterprise, we should make our ancient military name and chivalrous credit to flourish againe.
  4. transitive To glut.
  5. transitive To put flesh on; to fatten.
  6. To remove the flesh from the skin during the making of leather.

Talk about this word