flench, flinch, flense, v.
(flɛnʃ, flɪnʃ, flɛns)
Also flence, flinse.
[a. Da. flense of same meaning; the word with wider application is found in Norw. as flinsa, flunsa to flay, tear off.]
1. trans. To cut up and slice the fat from (a whale or flayed seal); to slice (the blubber) from the bones of the whale.
| 1814 Scott To Dk. Buccleugh 13 Aug. in Lockhart, The Islesmen of Sanda were..flinching..the blubber to boil. 1820 Scoresby Acc. Arctic Reg. II. 292 Before a whale can be flensed, as the operation of taking off the fat and whale⁓bone is called. 1823 G. W. Manby Voy. Greenl. 65 For the purpose of ‘flinsing’ or stripping it of its blubber. 1867 Smyth Sailor's Word-bk., Flense. |
2. To flay or skin (a seal); to strip off (the skin of a seal).
| 1874 Markham Whaling Cruise ii. 33 The marvellous rapidity..with which our men would skin, or as it is termed, ‘flinch’ the beast [seal]. 1875 Capt. Gray in Buckland Log-bk. 312 The [seal] skins are then flenched. 1881 Leslie tr. Nordenskiöld's Voy. Vega iii. 114 The hunter lies to at an ice-floe to flense upon it a seal that has been shot. |
Hence ˈflenching, ˈflensing vbl. n.; also ˈflencher, ˈflenser, one who flenches or flenses whales.
| 1814 Scott Diary 11 Aug. in Lockhart, The crew..with their long flinching knives with which they cut up the whales. 1820 Scoresby Acc. Arctic Reg. II. 299 The flensers commence with the belly and under jaw. Ibid. II. 301 During the progress of the flensing. 1874 Markham Whaling Cruise iv. 50 The cutting up or ‘flinching’ of the fish. |