flesh
Meanings
- The soft tissue of the body, especially muscle and fat.
- The skin of a human or animal.
- Bare arms, bare legs, bare torso.
- Animal tissue regarded as food; meat (but sometimes excluding fish).
- The human body as a physical entity.
- The mortal body of a human being, contrasted with the spirit or soul.
- The evil and corrupting principle working in man.
- The soft, often edible, parts of fruits or vegetables.
- Tenderness of feeling; gentleness.
- Kindred; stock; race.
- A yellowish pink color; the color of some Caucasian human skin.
- 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.
- To bury (something, especially a weapon) in flesh.
- To inure or habituate someone in or to a given practice.
- To glut.
- To put flesh on; to fatten.
- To remove the flesh from the skin during the making of leather.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
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”).