Word Confusion: Flense versus Flesh

Gerund: flensing

Third person present verb: flenses
Past tense or past participle: flensed
Present participle: flensing

Alternative spelling: flench

Plural for the noun: flesh

Third person present verb: fleshes
Past tense or past participle: fleshed
Present participle: fleshing

• Strip (skin or fat) from a carcass

• The flesh of an animal, regarded as food
• The pulpy substance of a fruit or vegetable, especially the part that is eaten
• The skin or surface of the human body with reference to its color, appearance, or sensual properties
• [the flesh] The human body and its physical needs and desires, especially as contrasted with the mind or the soul
• A light brownish pink, a yellowish-pink, or a grayish-yellow color
• [Now considered offensive] Flesh color

Fatness

• Weight

[Archaic] Humankind

[Archaic] Living creatures generally

[flesh and blood] A person’s family or relatives

[Christian Science] An illusion that matter has sensation

Verb, intransitive:
[flesh out] To put weight on

To become fleshy (often used with up or out)

Verb, transitive:
[flesh something out] To add more details to something that exists only in a draft or outline form

• To overlay or cover (a skeleton or skeletal frame) with flesh or with a flesh-like substance

[Hunting; Obsolete] To give (a hound or hawk) a piece of the flesh of game that has been killed in order to make it more eager for the chase

To remove the flesh adhering to (a skin or hide)

[Archaic] To plunge (a weapon) into the flesh

[Archaic] To incite and accustom (persons) to bloodshed or battle by an initial experience

[Obsolete] To inflame the ardor or passions of by a foretaste

[Archaic] To satiate with flesh or fleshly enjoyments

• Surfeit
• Glut

They were flensing off the skin.

“We flense the corpse, cut the skin in strips, feed them through the projector” (Waldrep).

“I scarcely believe that in the course of the day we met with a single piece of ice large enough to flense a seal upon” (Nordenskieold).

A person with tender flesh should not expose it to direct sunlight.

The food an animal eats will affect the taste and texture of its flesh.

He was a flesh-eater.

Halve the avocados and scrape out the flesh.

She gasped as the cold water hit her flesh.

I have never been one to deny the pleasures of the flesh.

The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.

The crayons they once called flesh have been labeled peach since 1962.

Even after giving birth to her third child, she had very little excess flesh to lose.

The cattle are in good flesh.

It is a higher plane of existence, a domain of mystery, where flesh has never walked.

Are we not the guardians of all flesh, from the tiniest burrowers of earth to the grandest dwellers of ocean?

“According to the revelation of Christian Science, flesh is an illusion of physical sense and has no power to confine or to destroy God’s image, the real man” (Bauman).

Verb, intransitive:
He had fleshed out to a solid 220 pounds.

“This has since been fleshed out to Chicago and Singapore, which is home to six of the eight suites” (Navarro).

“But that is an anecdotal assessment and will require more time to flesh out” (Crothers).

Verb, transitive:
The theorists have fleshed out a variety of scenarios.

The bones appeared to have been fleshed, as if to simulate some sort of reconstruction.

When Evan tells the story, it’s more fleshed, more compelling and believable.

The playwright wrote pretty good characters, but the actors really fleshed them out.

It was hardly necessary to flesh those foxhounds — they were excited enough by their master’s call to the hunt.

He fleshed his troops by indulging them with enterprises against the enemy’s posts.

Under his regime, it was not uncommon for very young boys to be fleshed as indoctrination into a culture of brutality.

Chemicals remove the hair and preserving salts, and then the hides are fleshed.

The hides we work with have been thoroughly fleshed before we receive them.

With brazen might, she fleshed her sword into the dragon’s throat.

I shall not be easily fleshed — especially by those of questionable intent.

Are you gentlemen quite fleshed?