Flensed

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Removed the skin or outer covering from an animal, usually by cutting it away in strips
2. Stripped off the hide or outer layer of an animal, often in preparation for processing or preservation
3. Cut away the outer skin or peeled the surface layer from the body of an animal

Etymology: Flensed is the past tense and past participle of "flense," a verb meaning to strip the skin or blubber from a whale or seal, usually by cutting it away in long strips. English borrowed the verb from Danish, where "flense" (now often spelled "flænse") carried the same sense. The word arrived with the whaling trade, when sailors and hunters needed a precise term for a specific job. The Danish and English words share an ancestry with the Old Norse root behind the same idea of peeling or stripping, and the English verb kept its specialized, almost technical focus on the work of removing the hide from large sea mammals. Few other words in English are so narrowly tied to one trade.

Synonyms: stripped, peeled, skinned