Log in or Sign up
  1. flay love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. v. To strip off the skin or outer covering of.
  2. v. To strip of money or goods; fleece.
  3. v. To whip or lash.
  4. v. To assail with stinging criticism; excoriate.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. To skin; strip off the skin of: as, to flay an ox.
  2. To strip off, in a general sense.
  3. To cause to fly; put to flight.
  4. To frighten.
  5. To be fear-struck.
  6. n. Fright; fear.
  7. n. A kick; a random blow; a fit of ill humor.

Wiktionary

  1. v. to strip skin off
  2. v. to lash
  3. v. transitive, Northern England, Scotland To cause to fly; put to flight; drive off (by frightening).
  4. v. transitive, Northern England, Scotland To frighten; scare; terrify.
  5. v. intransitive, Northern England, Scotland To be fear-stricken.
  6. n. Northern England, Scotland A fright; a scare.
  7. n. Northern England, Scotland Fear; a source of fear; a formidable matter; a fearsome or repellent-looking individual.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. v. To skin; to strip off the skin or surface of

WordNet 3.0

  1. v. strip the skin off

Etymologies

  1. From Middle English flayen, flaien, fleien, from Old English *flīeġan ("to cause to fly, put to flight, frighten"; found only in compounds: āflīeġan), from Proto-Germanic *flaugijanan (“to let fly, cause to fly”), causitive of Proto-Germanic *fleuganan (“to fly”), from Proto-Indo-European *plew-k-, *plew- (“to run, flow, swim, fly”). Cognate with Old High German arflaugjan ("to frighten, cause to flee"; whence Middle High German ervlougen ("to put to flight, drive away, expel")), Icelandic fleygja ("to throw away, discard"), Gothic 𐌿𐍃-𐍆𐌻𐌰𐌿𐌲𐌾𐌰𐌽 (us-flaugjan, "to cause to fly"). (Wiktionary)
  2. Middle English flen, from Old English flēan. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

Show 10 more examples...

Lists

These user-created lists contain the word ‘flay’.

Comments

No comments yet...

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

Tweets

Looking for tweets for flay.

‘flay’ has been looked up 2772 times, loved by 1 person, added to 33 lists, and has a Scrabble score of 10.