fleshmeat
English
editAlternative forms
editEtymology
editFrom Old English flǣsċmete, equivalent to flesh + meat.
Pronunciation
editNoun
editfleshmeat (countable and uncountable, plural fleshmeats)
- (dated) The flesh of animals (excluding fish or invertebrates) used or prepared for food.
- Synonym: meat
- a. 1529, John Skelton, Colyn Cloute, London: Richard Kele, c. 1545,[1]
- some of you do eate / In lenton season fleshe mete
- 1671, Margaret Cavendish, “The She-Anchoret”, in Natures Picture[2], London, Book 2, p. 574:
- […] Fish may be mix’d with Flesh-meat, although all Physicians are against it: for certainly, the natural freshness and coldness of Fish, doth temper and allay the natural heat and saltness that is in Flesh-meat,
- 1722, Daniel Defoe, “A Journal of the Plague Year”, in et al.[3], London: E. Nutt, page 92:
- […] I had no Flesh-meat, and the Plague raged so violently among the Butchers, and Slaughter-Houses […] that it was not advisable, so much as to go over the Street to them.
- 1848, Elizabeth Gaskell, chapter 6, in Mary Barton[4], volume 1, London: Chapman and Hall, page 98:
- […] it seemed hard to be spunging on Jem, and taking a’ his flesh-meat money to buy bread for me and them as I ought to be keeping.
- 1923, Arnold Bennett, chapter 6, in Riceyman Steps[5], London: Cassell, page 115:
- “But how shall you cook it [the mutton]?”
“Boil it, ’m. He never has flesh meat, not often that is, but when he does I boil it.”
Usage notes
editOriginally used to specify foods comprising animal flesh when the word meat was a general term for food of any kind; compare spoonmeat, sweetmeat.