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PlainSpell

flesh

/flɛʃ/noun, verb

flesh is spelled F-L-E-S-H: 5 letters and one syllable. It appears 16 times per million words in written English, the 5,121st most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, flesh means “The soft tissue of the body, especially muscle and fat” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of flesh is fleshes.

How many letters and syllables are in flesh?

Letters5: F-L-E-S-H
Syllables1 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing16 times per million words; the 5,121st most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searchednone measured in search
Same letters

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How common is flesh?

Flesh appears 16 times per million words in written English, the 5,121st most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce flesh?

  • /flɛʃ/

Flesh has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-flesh.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Words people confuse with flesh

Also written: neither fish nor flesh, neither fish nor flesh, nor good red herring, neither fish, flesh, nor fowl.

Sources: English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

What rhymes with flesh?

No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as flesh.

Spelled with the same letters in another order: shelf.

Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).

Forms of flesh

  • fleshes plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • fleshing participle, present
  • fleshed participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does flesh mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 1

    The soft tissue of the body, especially muscle and fat.

    The flesh of chicken, fowl, and turkey has much shorter fibre than that of ruminating animals, and is not intermingled with fat,–the fat always being found in layers directly under the skin, and surrounding the intestines.

  2. 2

    The skin of a human or animal.

  3. 3

    Bare arms, bare legs, bare torso.

  4. 4

    Animal tissue regarded as food; meat (but sometimes excluding fish).

  5. 5

    The human body as a physical entity.

  6. 6

    The mortal body of a human being, contrasted with the spirit or soul.

  7. 7

    The evil and corrupting principle working in man.

  8. 8

    The soft, often edible, parts of fruits or vegetables.

verb

  1. 1

    To reward (a hound, bird of prey etc.) with flesh of the animal killed, to excite it for further hunting; to train (an animal) to have an appetite for flesh.

  2. 2

    To bury (something, especially a weapon) in flesh.

  3. 3

    obsoleteTo inure or habituate someone in or to a given practice.

  4. 4

    To glut.

  5. 5

    To put flesh on; to fatten.

  6. 6

    To remove the flesh from the skin during the making of leather.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Flesh in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchchair (body tissue), peau (skin), viande (animal tissue as food), corps (human body entity)
GermanFleisch (body tissue), Haut (skin), Leib (human body entity), zunehmen (to put flesh on), ausarbeiten, untermauern (To add details)
Portuguesecarne (body tissue), pele (skin), corpo (human body entity), engordar (to put flesh on), enfeitar (To add details), polpa (edible part of fruit/vegetable)
Spanishcarne (body tissue), pellejo (skin), descarnar (to remove the flesh)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does flesh come from?

From Middle English flesh, flesch, flæsch, from Old English flǣsċ, from Proto-West Germanic *flaiski, from Proto-Germanic *flaiski, from Proto-Indo-European *pleh₁ḱ- (“to tear, peel off”).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after flesh