woodflesh

English

Etymology

From wood +‎ flesh.

Noun

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.