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Since this word has not appeared on the Board, nor in AWAD archives, nor in tsuwm's site, it seemed worth posting: "A mountain lion's tongue is studded with spikes that can flense cartilage from bone or hair from its prey's hide."
From Discover, June 2001,p.62
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I think the word "flense" is poorly chosen. The etymology of "flense" describes a rather different process.
Flense (?), v. t. [Cf. Dan. flense, D. vlensen, vlenzen, Scot. flinch.] To strip the blubber or skin from, as from a whale, seal,
Flensing involves careful dissection to remove the blubber in large pieces. The text in the magazine describes removal of hair or tissue by the spikes on the big cat's tongue. For this the word "rasp" would be a much better description.
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After flensing the blubber from the whale, the next step was to "try" it in big heated kettles. This meaning of "try" is seldom heard today, the word "render" being used instead.
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Moby Dick is the place to have been exposed to those words (and many more such) for the first time. We probably don't even remember having come across them before, but that's the source!
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This meaning of "try" is seldom heard today, the word "render" being used instead.
One could try rendering the blubber with a rasp but, frankly, I flense at the thought.
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It is hard for us today to imagine how precious the whale oil was,so that great pains had to to taken to waste none of the blubber. Whaling cruises often lasted several years, and the ships could not hold many hundred barrels.Imagine what the chow was like, with nothing but salt meat and weevily biscuits. Mutiny muttered if no plum duff, the simplest possible pudding on Sunday.
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Yeah, but there was protein in those weevils!
DubDub
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Weevils undoubtedly contain protein. But their outer shell is probably chitin, notoriously indigestible. I have seen cats eat cupfuls of beetles, and then have to regurgitate a revolting bolus of beetle shells. I recall reading that before biting an ancient sea biscuit, the diner knocked the biscuit against the table sharply to
suggest to the weevils that they should exfenestrate themselves. I do not care to dwell on what I suspect the weevils left behind as proof of their occupancy.
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I do not care to dwell on what I suspect the weevils left behind as proof of their occupancy.
Ut si
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Dear wwh: For the record, I like very much the use of flense in the context you first posted here. It is graphic, clean, and to-the-point. It's been used there almost poetically. Give those poets a break, huh?  And, Faldage, for us bumpkins, what does "Ut si" mean? All I can think of it "court-sey," and I'm fairly surely that word doesn't fit the context at all. Best regards, Wordwind
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