flense
Americanverb (used with object)
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to strip the blubber or the skin from (a whale, seal, etc.).
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to strip off (blubber or skin).
verb
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of flense
1805–15; < Danish flense or Dutch flensen
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
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.
From The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II by Leslie, Alexander, fl. 1879-1882
It took us two hours to kill our first whale, and four to flense it.
From Peter the Whaler by Austin, Henry
After the body of the Enron data has been secured in a researcher’s computer like the sperm whale to the side of the Pequod, it must be flensed into useful parts.
From Scientific American ● Jun. 18, 2013
Wilson carried out a suggestion of his own to-night by covering the runners of a 9-ft. sledge with strips from the skin of a seal which he killed and flensed for the purpose.
From Scott's Last Expedition Volume I by Scott, Robert Falcon
Before a whale can be flensed, as the operation of taking off the fat and whalebone is called, some preliminary measures are requisite.
All of it, good and bad, every moment flensed away.
From Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Doctorow, Cory
For about four days we had proceeded south, our course interrupted whenever we met with a whale; and if she was killed, we made fast to a floe till we had flensed and made off.
From Peter the Whaler by Austin, Henry
"The Offer," which confuses a baring-it-all origin story with a botched whale flensing, does not substantively change that.
From Salon ● Apr. 29, 2022
Over the next few hours Fred was in charge of carving up the whale, known as flensing.
From BBC ● Jul. 14, 2013
They dragged it back to the ship and began flensing it of its blubber.
From Salon ● Jun. 12, 2012
A gang of workmen, wielding long-handled flensing knives, sliced off the thick blubber in foot-wide strips.
From Time Magazine Archive
According to Hussey, the harbor had a “most appalling stench” from the dead whales moored in the harbor awaiting flensing.
From "Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World" by Jennifer Armstrong
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
