a. [f. FLESH sb. + -LESS.]
1. Destitute of flesh.
1586. Marlowe, 1st Pt. Tamburl., V. ii.
| He [Death] now is seated on my horsemen’s spears, | |
| And on their points his fleshless body feeds. |
1607. Dekker, Knt’s, Conjur. (1842), 41. The boate is made of nothing but the worm eaten ribs of coffins, nailed together with the splinters of fleshlesse shin-bones dig’d out of graues, being broken in pieces.
1786. trans. Beckford’s Vathek (1868), 113. Here, upon two beds of incorruptible cedar, lay recumbent the fleshless forms of the Preadamite Kings, who had been monarchs of the whole earth.
1842. Barham, Ingol. Leg., Nell Cook.
| A fleshless, sapless, skeleton lay in that horrid well! | |
| But who the deuce ’twas put it there those Masons could not tell. |
† b. Without material substance; phantom-like.
1592. Greene, Alphonsus, III. (Rtldg.) 235/2.
| And when thou know’st the certainty thereof, | |
| By fleshless visions show it presently | |
| To Amurack, in pain of penalty. |
2. Without superfluous flesh; emaciated, lean.
1598. Sylvester, Du Bartas, II. i. iv. Handy Crafts, 38.
| He chooseth one [horse] for his industrious proof, | |
| With round, high, hollow, smooth, brown, jetty hoof, | |
| With pasterns short, upright but yet in mean, | |
| Dry, sinewy shanks, strong, fleshless knees and lean. |
1809. Crabbe, Tales, 36.
| Small black-legg’d sheep devour with hunger keen | |
| The meagre herbage, fleshless, lank, and lean. |
1847. J. Wilson, Chr. North (1857), I. 161. Her soul was as clear as ever while racking pain was in her fleshless bones.
† 3. Without meat. Obs.–1
c. 1394. P. Pl. Crede, 787. Wortes flechles wroughte.
