1. A hook for removing meat from the pot.
c. 1325. in Rel. Ant., I. 292.
| Summe notes arn shorte and somme a long noke | |
| Somme kroken a-weyward als a fleshoke. |
c. 1386. Chaucer, Sompn. T., 22.
| Ful hard it is, with fleischhok or with oules | |
| To ben y-clawed, or brend, or i-bake. |
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 166/1. Flesche hooke, creagra, fuscina.
1514. Barclay, Cyt. & Uplondyshm., Pref. (Percy Soc.), p. l.
| Me thought the scullians, like fendes of their lookes, | |
| Came forthe with whittles, some other with fleshhokes. |
1611. Bible, 2 Chron. iv. 16. The pots also, and the shouels, and the fleshhookes, and all their instruments, did Huram his father make to King Solomon for the house of the LORD, of bright brass.
fig. 16[?]. Brathwait, Descr. Death, in Farr, S. P. Jas. I. (1848), 271.
| Chop-falne, crest-sunke, drie-bon’d anatomie, | |
| Earth-turned, mole-eied, flesh-hook, that puls us hence; | |
| Night-crow, fate’s-doome, that tells us we must die; | |
| Pilgrim-remover, that deprives us sence. |
2. dial. (See quot.)
1881. Leicestersh. Gloss., Flesh-hook, an iron hook with a long ‘stail,’ used to pull hides out of the tan-pits.
3. A hook to hang meat upon; a ‘pot-hook.’
1596. Nashe, Saffron Walden, Wks. (Grosart), III. 64. What, make an Errata in the midst of my Booke, and haue my margent bescratcht (like a Merchants booke) with these roguish Arsemetrique gibbets or flesh-hookes, and cyphers, or round oos, lyke pismeeres egges?
1874. in Knight, Dict. Mech.
