efflower

present singular third person efflowers · participle present efflowering · participle past efflowered · past efflowered

1. rareTo graze; (leatherworking) to remove the outer surface of (a skin) with a knife.

   In the pregnant bounds / Of delicatest breath, that but efflowers the ear / And lapses into nothingness[.]

   1913, John Galen Howard, “From olive groves of academe”, in University of California Chronicle, page 101

   2 more examples

   Chamois or Shamoy leather.—The skins are first washed, limed, fleeced, and branned as above described. They are next efflowered, that is, deprived of their epidermis by a concave knife, blunt in its middle part, upon the convex horse-beam.

   1864, Andrew Ure, “A Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures and Mines”, in Leather, volume II

   Chamois leather—The skin of the Alpine goat of that name, which has been “efflowered” or deprived of the epidermis.

   1972, Sophia Frances Ann Caulfeild, Blanche C. Saward, Encyclopedia of Victorian Needlework: Dictionary of Needlework, page 64