ppl. a. [f. FLESH sb. and v. + -ED.]
1. Clothed or furnished with flesh: chiefly with some defining prefix. Also, fleshed and boned.
1422. trans. Secreta Secret., Priv. Priv. (E.E.T.S.), 224. The tokenys of a lowe herte bene lytill visage, lytill eighen, and lytill othyr lymes of the body; and lene y-flesshide.
1594. Carew, Huarte’s Exam. Wits (1616), 276. To be meanly fleshed, that is, neither ouermuch, nor verie little; giueth euidence that a woman holdeth her selfe in the second degree of cold and moist.
1611. Bible, Gen. xli. 2. And behold, there came vp out of the riuer seuen well fauoured kine, and fat fleshed, and they fed in a medow.
1674. Josselyn, Voy. New Eng., 99. The Partridge is larger than ours, white flesht, but very dry.
1748. Richardson, Clarissa, Wks. 1883, VII. 287. D——d, d——d doings! vociferated the Peer, shaking his loose fleshed wabbling chaps, which hung on his shoulders like an old cow’s dewlap.
1851. Ruskin, Mod. Paint., II. II. III. iv. § 16. Those painters only have the right imaginative power who can set the supernatural form before us fleshed and boned like ourselves.
1858. T. J. Hogg, Life Shelley, II. x. 316. My kind and notable hostess asked me in confidence what I thought of the handsome, well-fleshed girl?
1869. Daily News, 30 July. A very sleek, level-fleshed bull.
b. of fruit (with defining prefix).
1859. Jephson, Brittany, v. 63. After the potage came the bouilli, of which I was induced to eat for the sake of the magnificent orange-fleshed melon which accompanied it.
1859. Darwin, Orig. Spec., iv. (1873), 67. In a state of nature, where the trees would have to struggle with other trees and with a host of enemies, such differences would effectually settle which variety, whether a smooth or downy, a yellow or purple fleshed fruit, should succeed.
2. [Cf. F. acharné.] a. Inured to bloodshed, hardened. b. Eager for battle, c. Animated by relentless hatred, bent on the destruction or injury of a person. Const. upon.
a. 1594. Shaks., Rich. III., IV. iii. 6.
| To do this peece of ruthfull Butchery, | |
| They were flesht Villaines, bloody Dogges. |
a. 1616. Beaum. & Fl., Custom of Country, IV. i.
| A flesh’d Ruffian, | |
| That hath so often taken the Strappado, | |
| That ’tis to him but as a lofty Trick | |
| Is to a Tumbler. |
b. 1591. Horsey, Trav. (Hakluyt Soc.), 262–3. The Poll comes with his couragius and now fleshed armye, assaults the fainte-harted armyes and townes of the Muscovetts.
1719. D’Urfey, Pills, I. 355.
| The Jacks are fierce, and Williamites are flesh’d | |
| The Poets not so bold, but may be dash’d, | |
| Wit has no Armour proof, ’gainst being thrash’d. |
c. c. 1620. Trag. Barnavelt, IV. iii., in Bullen, Old Pl. (1883), II. 277. Bar. There can be no attonement: I know the Prince: Vandort is fleshd vpon me.
1656. B. Harris, trans. Parival’s The History of This Iron Age, 176. These alternative victories, and these Changes of Fortune, (constant in her inconstance) ought to have made the Princes remember, that being Christians, they were bound to lay aside their animosities; but they were so fleshed upon one another, that they aspired to nothing lesse then peace, and took nothing more to heart, then the utter ruine of each other.
