Flense (Verb)
Meaning
Strip the blubber or skin from (a whale or seal).
Classification
Verbs of buying, selling, owning.
Examples
- The whalers moved in to flense the carcass of the recently killed leviathan, to extract its valuable oil and other body parts.
- Preparation for rendering required the crew to flense the whale's blubber from its skin, a meticulous and difficult task.
- Professional butchers know the intricate techniques to safely and humanely flense seals as well as larger whales.
- Though harpooning whales has become far less common in commercial practices, workers still need to be skilled in the process to flense the animal, when required.
- To separate the whale's hide from the rest of its body, a practiced approach is required to flense efficiently while causing minimal damage.