Also 5 fleshnes. [f. FLESHY a. + -NESS.] The quality or state of being fleshy; fullness of flesh.
14[?]. trans. Secreta Secret., cxxxii. (E.E.T.S.), 117. With-oute greet fleshnes yn þe knees.
1533. Elyot, Cast. Helthe, I. (1541), 2/1. The Bodye, where heate and moysture haue souerayntie, is called Sanguine, wherein the Ayre hath preeminence; and it is perceyued and knowen by these sygnes which do folowe … Carnositie or fleshynesse, [etc.].
1581. Mulcaster, Positions, xxi. (1887), 90. Running … if it helpe it any waye, it is in that it abateth the fleshinesse, & corpulence of the body.
1641. Milton, Ch. Govt., II. iii. (1851), 170. A diet puffing up the soul with a slimy fleshinesse, and weakning her principall organick parts.
1788. Baillie, in Phil. Trans., LXXVIII. 358. The person seems to have used his right hand in preference to his left, as is usually the case, which was readily discovered by the greater bulk and harness of that hand, as well as the greater fleshiness of the arm.
1830. Lindley, Nat. Syst. Bot., 72. Geissoloma has octandrous flowers, with no peculiar fleshiness in the anthers.
1883. G. Allen, Strawberries, in Longm. Mag., II. July, 311. Suppose any ancestral potentilla ever to have shown any marked tendency towards fleshiness in the berry, what would have happened?
fig. 1644. Vaughan, Serm., 8. There is with the Apostle a Wisdom of the flesh … a kind of flesh, and fleshines in the very mind and spirit.
b. concr. A fleshy substance or growth.
1616. Surfl. & Markh., Country Farme, 83. The male [Indian Hen] hath no combe, as our Cockes, but in stead thereof a red fleshinesse.
