Definition of "flesh" in English

noun

1. 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. The skin of a human or animal.

3. (by extension) Bare arms, bare legs, bare torso.

4. Animal tissue regarded as food; meat (but sometimes excluding fish).

5. The human body as a physical entity.

6. (religion) The mortal body of a human being, contrasted with the spirit or soul.

   • 1929 January, Bassett Morgan (Grace Jones), Bimini, first published in Weird Tales, reprinted 1949, in Avon Fantasy Reader, Issue 10, But death had no gift for me, no power to free me from flesh.

7. (religion) The evil and corrupting principle working in man.

8. The soft, often edible, parts of fruits or vegetables.

9. (obsolete) Tenderness of feeling; gentleness.

10. (obsolete) Kindred; stock; race.

11. A yellowish pink color; the color of some Caucasian human skin.

verb

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.

2. (transitive) To bury (something, especially a weapon) in flesh.

3. (obsolete) To inure or habituate someone in or to a given practice.

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.