flesh

Formsfleshes, fleshing, fleshed

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The soft tissue that makes up the body, particularly muscle and fat.

   The blade sliced through skin and into the flesh beneath.

   Long illness had wasted his flesh until his frame looked gaunt.

   Similartissue, muscle, meat

   Note

   The sense the whole word grows from, though its origin looks the other way. Old English flǣsċ goes back to an Indo-European root meaning "to tear, peel off," so the word for the body's soft tissue keeps a memory of what is torn or stripped away. Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book (1918) compares the fiber and fat of poultry flesh, and the anatomical word crosses into the kitchen without any change of meaning.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   Animal tissue eaten as food, that is, meat, though fish is sometimes excluded.

   During Lent the villagers abstained from flesh and ate only bread and fish.

   Scavengers stripped the flesh from the carcass within hours.

   Similarmeat

   Note

   Food is where flesh carries the weight of law and ritual: Tyndale's Pentateuch of 1530 sets out which flesh may be eaten and which must be burned with fire. It is usually uncountable (eat flesh, abstain from flesh), and beside meat it sounds weightier and less neutral. That is why Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore, writing in 2018, can call chicken the planet's coming favorite flesh. Where it excludes fish, it means the meat of land creatures.

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The soft, often edible part of a fruit or vegetable, as distinct from its skin, rind, or seeds.

   The avocado's pale green flesh had turned creamy and ripe.

   He carved away the rind to reach the watermelon's pink flesh.

   Similarpulp, meat

   Note

   The animal word lends itself to plants, and the loan reaches further than fruit. Diana Beresford-Kroeger, in Arboretum America (2003), writes of the flesh of black walnuts as a hoarded winter protein, so a nut's kernel counts too. Its usual contrasts are rind, skin, shell, stone and pit. The flesh is whatever soft part lies inside them.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The skin covering a human or animal body.

   Years in the sun had toughened the flesh on his hands.

   The collar had rubbed the dog's flesh raw behind the ears.

   Similarskin, hide

5. 5
   noununcountable

   The human body considered as a physical entity.

   Seeing the celebrated singer in the flesh left her speechless.

   The sculptor wanted to capture the weight and warmth of living flesh.

   Similarbody, person

   Note

   The body as presence rather than tissue, and that sense lives in two fixed phrases without an article. In the flesh means physically there rather than on screen or in print. Made flesh means given a body. Michael Bronski, writing in Gay Community News in 1986, uses it for meeting a man who had been a legend to him: "the fantasy made flesh."

6. 6
   noununcountable

   The mortal human body, contrasted with the spirit or soul.

   He believed the soul must rule the flesh, not the other way around.

   At death the flesh decays while, in their belief, the soul lives on.

   Similarbody

   Oppositespirit, soul

   Note

   Religious language uses the body as the emblem of everything that dies. The King James Bible of 1611 says "all flesh is as grasse," where all flesh means every mortal creature, and it sets flesh and Spirit against each other as contrary powers. Paired with spirit or soul, the word stands for mortality. When the contrast shifts from dying to sinning, it has become the corrupting principle.

7. 7
   noununcountable

   Exposed bare skin of the arms, legs, or torso.

   Critics complained that the costume revealed too much flesh.

   On the crowded beach, sunburned flesh was on display everywhere.

   Similarskin

8. 8
   noununcountable

   A yellowish-pink color, like that of some pale human skin.

   She chose a flesh tone for the doll's painted cheeks.

   The fabric came in a pale flesh shade that suited the portrait.

   Similarnude, peach

   Note

   A color name that has been dropping out of use, for a reason built into its definition: it treats one pale complexion as the default skin. Tayari Jones, in An American Marriage (2018), describes "the peachy white that crayon companies used to call 'flesh'," which marks the label as a thing of the past. Where a neutral term is wanted, peach or a named skin tone avoids that assumption.

9. 9
   noununcountable

   The evil, corrupting force at work within human nature.

   He saw every temptation as the flesh struggling against his better will.

   The sermon urged the faithful to crucify the flesh and follow the spirit.

   Similarcarnality, sinfulness

   Oppositespirit

   Note

   Here the word names no tissue at all. A fasting ascetic can be all bone and still be at war with the flesh, because what is meant is an inclination of the will toward sin, not the body itself. Theological writing keeps the definite article: the flesh, never a flesh. To tell it from the mortal body, ask whether the sentence is about dying or about sinning.

10. 10
    verbtransitive

    To scrape the residual muscle, fat, and tissue from the inner side of a hide during leather production.

    Apprentices flesh the skins on a beam with a two-handled knife.

    He had fleshed dozens of hides by the end of the week.

    Similarscrape

    Note

    Leather-making turns the word around. Where the fattening verb adds flesh, the tanner's verb takes it away, scraping it from the hide. Context nearly always settles which is meant, because one takes a living animal as its object and the other takes a skin. The noun inside the verb stays the same either way, and only the direction changes.

Showing meanings only. Show all 17