écorché means A figure drawn, painted or sculpted so as to show the muscles of the body without skin.
écorché is pronounced /eɪkɔːˈʃeɪ/.
Why “écorché” is a great word
A figure, drawn or sculpted, that depicts a body stripped of its skin to reveal the underlying musculature for anatomical study. Borrowed from French écorché, the past participle of écorcher ("to flay, to skin"), from the Old French escorchier, ultimately from the Vulgar Latin *excorticāre ("to strip of bark"), from Latin ex- ("out, off") + cortex ("bark, rind"). Unlike an anatomical model, a broader, often clinical teaching aid, or a muscle man, an idealized figure of bulging but intact physique, the écorché exists in a stark middle ground between art and science. It is the cold gleam of tendon over bone in a wax museum, the precise red chalk lines mapping sinews on a page, and the ghostly pallor of a marble figure flayed by the sculptor's knowing chisel—a deliberate, vulnerable unmasking that teaches us how we are built by showing us precisely what we are not meant to see.
noun
- A figure drawn, painted or sculpted so as to show the muscles of the body without skin.e.g.“Apollo with a potato peeler, she flays the Marsyas of humanity, exposing raw nerve. Man is a red-ribboned écorché in her laboratory.”
Words closest in meaning
By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.
- croquis 81% match — A quick and sketchy drawing, often of a live model. Croquis drawings are usually made in a few minutes, after which the model changes pose and another croquis is drawn. vs écorché →
- anatomize 80% match — To cut up or dissect (the body of a human being or an animal), specifically for the purpose of investigating its anatomy. vs écorché →
- excoriate 80% match — to remove the skin and/or fur of, to flay, to skin vs écorché →
- esquisse 79% match — The first sketch of a picture or model of a statue. vs écorché →
- emaciated 79% match — Thin or haggard, especially from hunger or disease. vs écorché →
- ossature 79% match — A skeletal framework; an underlying structure. vs écorché →
- contrapposto 79% match — The position of a human figure whose hips and legs are twisted away from the direction of the head and shoulders; (countable) an instance of this. vs écorché →
- taxidermy 79% match — The art of stuffing and mounting the skins of dead animals for exhibition in a lifelike state. vs écorché →