Fleshhouse

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The physical body viewed as a dwelling place that houses the soul or spirit during life
2. A poetic term for the human body, imagined as a house of flesh that shelters the living self
3. The bodily frame considered as the home or lodging of the inner spirit

Etymology: The most surprising fact here is that "fleshhouse" once meant a butcher's shop. Its Old English ancestor, "flǣsċhūs", meant "slaughterhouse" or "meat shop", built from "flǣsc" (flesh, meat) and "hūs" (house). The Middle English form "fleshusse" carried that same literal sense of a place where meat was sold or killed. The modern sense, "body as dwelling," is a figurative reading of that same compound. Where the older word named a building for meat, the newer one treats the body itself as the house in which the soul lives, a metaphor that turns the butcher's premises into a home for the person.