woodflesh

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English

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Etymology

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From wood +‎ flesh.

Noun

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woodflesh (uncountable)

  1. (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.