Deflesh

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To remove flesh from a body or object; to strip away the soft tissues covering bones or structures; to cleanse or prepare by eliminating attached flesh
2. The act of detaching flesh from a surface or skeleton; the process of peeling off meat or soft material from bone or frame; surgically or mechanically clearing tissue from an area
3. Detaching or stripping away flesh from bone or underlying parts; clearing or exposing a structure by removing all muscular or soft tissue; refining or purifying by removing the flesh component

Etymology: "Deflesh" is a plain formation: the prefix "de-", which in English indicates removal or reversal, attached to "flesh," the Old English "flǣsc" that has meant the soft tissue of animals and people since the earliest records of the language. Put together, the verb means to strip the flesh away from something, most often bone, so that the underlying structure is left exposed. The sense has widened over time. Because the verb describes a process that is literal in the butchery of animals and in the preparation of skeletons, it has also been applied figuratively to clearing away anything superfluous, leaving only the essential framework of an idea, a text or a design. Its meaning therefore runs from the workshop or the carcass to the abstract work of refinement.

Synonyms: denude, skin, strip, peel, flay

Antonyms: flesh, cover