rawhide

American  

[raw-hahyd] / ˈrɔˌhaɪd /

noun

1. untanned skin of cattle or other animals.

2. a rope or whip made of rawhide.

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verb (used with object)

rawhided, rawhiding

1. to whip with a rawhide.

rawhide British  

/ ˈrɔːˌhaɪd /

noun

1. untanned hide

2. a whip or rope made of strips cut from such a hide

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Etymology

Origin of rawhide

First recorded in 1650–60; raw + hide ²

Explanation

Rawhide is dried animal skin that hasn't been treated and turned into leather. Lampshades and drum heads are sometimes made from rawhide, and so are those leathery chews you give your dog to gnaw on. To turn an animal hide into something strong and pliant (like boot laces, upholstery, or shoes), it has to be tanned, processed with chemicals that strengthen the material. Rawhide, on the other hand, is raw, or "in its natural state." This means it's more delicate and generally less useful than finished leather. The fact that rawhide stretches and softens when wet makes it ideal for drum heads. Dogs love to chew on rawhide, though many vets discourage it.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

rawhide rawhided rawhiding

However, during the FBI tests in 2022 at the agency’s lab in Quantico, Va., forensic analysts used a rawhide mallet to strike the gun so hard that components of the gun fractured.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 24, 2024

Metal ring bits adopted from the Spanish caused distinctive fractures in an animal’s teeth and palate; rawhide bridles developed by Native people wore telltale grooves in the lower jaw.

From Science Magazine ● Mar. 29, 2023

Or if the buckskin has been washed for five days in a row, it turns into rawhide.

From Salon ● Aug. 31, 2022

Mr. Kochever, 71, was recently standing over an odd assortment of football paraphernalia, all of it strewn throughout his bedroom: flags, dog masks, necklaces, rawhide bones.

From New York Times ● Feb. 3, 2018

He had broad shoulders and bulging arms, hands like hammers, and the leathery skin of a man who’d been sunburned so many times his naturally creamy complexion had grown tough and brown as rawhide.

From "The Reader" by Traci Chee

For 15 minutes she rawhided the critic in German.

From Time Magazine Archive

Labor The two big-bodied, grim-faced men sat in their green-walled hotel suites in Washington and listened as the President rawhided them over the radio.

From Time Magazine Archive

"Ollie" Burke kidded and rawhided them into battle shape, turned his engines at 31 knots, dressed each ship with a new in-signe: the "Little Beaver," a character from Artist Fred Harman's comic strip Red Ryder.

From Time Magazine Archive

Then, in a flood of intemperate language unmatched since his rawhiding of the striking railroad workers in 1946,* the President launched into an angry dressing-down of the whole steel industry.

From Time Magazine Archive

Seldom had a top-rank businessman given business such a rawhiding.

From Time Magazine Archive

In the evenings he brought work home and labored far into the night, frequently calling staff members in for consultation or for rawhiding rebuke.

From Time Magazine Archive

But they also knew him as a rawhiding commander who knew no friends.

From Time Magazine Archive

But here are the facts, and he knows it: for four years he's been rawhiding me at every chance with his practical jokes.

From Double Trouble Or, Every Hero His Own Villain by Orson Lowell

Related Words

• cane