English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From Old English flǣsċmete, equivalent to flesh +‎ meat.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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fleshmeat (countable and uncountable, plural fleshmeats)

  1. (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

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Originally used to specify foods comprising animal flesh when the word meat was a general term for food of any kind; compare spoonmeat, sweetmeat.