Other forms: fleeces, fleeced, fleecing
A fleece is the whole woolly coat of a sheep. Shear the fleece, a heavy fleece, roll the fleece.
It comes off in one piece if the shearing is done well, and a single fleece from a good sheep weighs a few kilos. The word also names the soft synthetic fabric and the jacket made from it, which is now the commonest use in Britain. As a verb, to fleece somebody is to swindle them out of money — the same image as stripping a sheep. Note the Golden Fleece of the Argonauts.
1nounfleeceThe whole woolly coat of a sheep.
“The farmer sheared the sheep and rolled each fleece into a neat bundle.”
2verbswindleTo swindle somebody out of money.
“The fake builders fleeced the old couple, charging thousands for work they never did.”
fleece is a wool coat, or a swindling.
Old English fleos is Germanic. The verb meaning to swindle came from the image of stripping a sheep bare, and is about four hundred years old.
Proto-West Germanic
*fleus
Old English
flēos
Middle English
fles
English, today
fleece
From Middle English fles, flees, flese, from Old English flēos, flīes, flȳs, from Proto-West Germanic fleus.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Farm & Countryside