woodflesh
English edit
Etymology edit
Noun edit
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.