verb
- past tense and past participle of flense; to strip the blubber or skin from a whale or seal
Usage: nautical; historical
Examples
- The whalers flensed the whale on the deck of the ship.
- After the hunt, the crew flensed the seal to harvest its blubber.
- The blubber was flensed in long strips and rendered into oil.
- Historically, whales were flensed for their valuable oil and bone.
- The harpooned whale was towed to shore to be flensed.