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woodflesh. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
woodflesh, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
woodflesh in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
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English
Etymology
wood + flesh
Noun
woodflesh (uncountable)
- (literary) The substance making up the central part of the trunk and branches of a tree, wood.
1949, Roald Dahl, “The Sound Machine”, in Roald Dahl: The Complete Short Stories, volume 2, Random House, published 2012:Klausner stared in horror at the place where the blade of the axe had sunk into the woodflesh of the tree; then gently he took the axe handle, worked the blade loose and threw the thing to the ground.
1993, Dagoberto Gilb, “Down in the West Texas Town”, in The Magic of Blood, New York: Grove Press, page 189:The sun burned; the heat was all, consumed all—even the whacks of a twenty-eight-ounce framing hammer swatting a sixteen-penny nail one time two times and three through the ridge board and into the peak end of a rafter, even the rippling buzz of an electric saw chewing through woodflesh, even they fell short of cutting through this insatiable heat.
1997, J. M. Coetzee, chapter 3, in Boyhood: Scenes from Provincial Life, Penguin, page 14:He cuts a five-foot stave from a poplar tree, peels off the bark, and spends an afternoon with a heated screwdriver burning into the white woodflesh the entire Morse and semaphore codes.