Definition of "flense" [flense]

• To strip the blubber or skin from (a whale, for example). (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "It was braised flensing on a bed of flensed greens with a side of flensing in flense sauce."
• "I flense my shame, daub skin with art, take hammered will to mount the rock where now I brace and rattle chain."
• "Are we always aiming to flense the rich complexity of connotation and find the bare bones, to parse structures of signifiers into structures of signifieds?"