flense means to strip the blubber or skin from, as from a whale, seal, etc. It carries an Arena rating of 1641, earned across 50 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, flense ranks #253 of 17,131 for Scariest Words, #560 of 17,142 for Most Ingenious Words, #2,632 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #3,130 of 17,149 for Most Exacting Words.
flense is pronounced /ˈflɛns/.
Why “flense” is a great word
FLENSE — [Verb] To strip the blubber or skin from a whale, seal, or similar animal. Borrowed from Danish flense (now spelled flænse), of the same meaning; related to Dutch flensen. First attested in English in the early 19th century. Unlike “skin,” a general term for removing hide, or “cleanse,” a process of purification it merely echoes in sound, to flense is a heavy, specialized butchery: the rhythmic heave of men on planks lashed to a blubber-slick carcass, the heavy scrape of the flensing knife parting fat from flesh, and the slick, steaming mass of peel rendered from the whole. It is a word whose harsh sound renders industrial efficiency chilling.
Etymology
Borrowed from Danish flense (now spelled flænse).
verb
- To strip the blubber or skin from, as from a whale, seal, etc.e.g.“In this domain right sex is capital, it flenses the feelings of all the poisonous artifices brought in by the think-box in the guise of clever ideas.” — 1974, Lawrence Durrell, Monsieur, Faber & Faber, published 1992, page 198:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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