Other forms: flayed, flaying, flays
To flay is to strip the skin off, or to criticise savagely. Flay the hide, flayed alive, flayed by the critics.
The literal sense is a butcher's or a torturer's, and it is one of the oldest recorded punishments. The figurative sense is standard in reviews, where being flayed means being taken apart in public. Note that the Old English verb is related to a word meaning to strike.
1verbflayTo strip the skin off.
“The hunters flayed the deer and hung the meat to dry.”
2verbcriticiseTo criticise savagely.
“The opposition leader flayed the government over its handling of the crisis.”
flay is a stripping.
Old English flean means to strip the skin from. The word is Germanic and old.
Proto-Germanic
*flaugijaną — to let fly, cause to fly
Old English
flīeġan
Middle English
flayen
English, today
flay
From Middle English flayen, flaien, fleien, from Old English flīeġan "to cause to fly, put to flight, frighten", from Proto-Germanic flaugijaną (“to let fly, cause to fly”), causative of Proto-Germanic fleuganą (“to fly”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire