How to Use flay in a Sentence

flay

verb

• The Indians tie Clyde to the Skinning Tree and flay him alive.
  — Jennifer Percy, Harper's magazine, 20 Jan. 2020
• After a few more tries, the doctor pulled it out in one piece and laid it out, legs flayed.
  — Scottie Andrew, CNN, 23 Aug. 2019
• For that, Pelosi was flayed on Twitter by left-wing accounts.
  — The Washington Post, The Denver Post, 17 May 2017
• Christ looked as dead as Uday Hussein, his welts dark and crusty, knees flayed, and feet, hands, and shoulder joints swollen black.
  — Nell Zink, Harper's magazine, 28 Oct. 2019
• Pedraza had been shot in the head and decapitated, and the skin had been flayed from her skull.
  — Washington Post, 12 Oct. 2017
• Future is, of course, no stranger to flaying himself on records.
  — Hannah Giorgis, The Atlantic, 6 July 2018
• Other works depict elephants killed for their tusks and trees flayed of their bark.
  — Washington Post, 8 Oct. 2019
• On her right side, the skin was flayed off, probably as the porpoise struggled while drowning in the net.
  — Rod Nordland, New York Times, 27 Apr. 2017
• Inside, a man is stretching skin on a flaying bench, and the stench of death is overwhelming.
  — Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 26 June 2023
• Much like zombies in Day of the Dead, the flayed are drawn to the steelworks where their bodies literally melt.
  — Amy MacKelden, Harper's BAZAAR, 4 July 2019
• Fain flayed the White House for failing to attach to the loan safeguards to protect existing jobs.
  — Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 13 Sep. 2023
• Bodies are flayed open, ripped apart at the ribs, viscera spilling, hung like cattle at the butcher; sores and lesions bloom on skin.
  — Nina MacLaughlin, BostonGlobe.com, 18 July 2019
• Perfect for flaying open your heart on a summer afternoon, with a glass of something cool to soothe the sting.
  — Olivia Waite, New York Times, 23 June 2023
• The narrator may be flayed open, but the other characters are held at arm’s length, vague and bloodless.
  — Naomi Huffman, The Atlantic, 22 Jan. 2024
• The camps were thrifty, too, weaving carpets from human hair, flaying skin to make lampshades.
  — Hugh Hunter, Philly.com, 27 Feb. 2018
• Rushworth and his buddies got their revenge the next day at the ditch race, where Jewell flayed Miettinen the Finn to take first place.
  — Sol Neelman, WIRED, 10 Sep. 2012
• For white liberals there is a kind of ecstasy to be achieved by flaying themselves with Coates’s hot, stinging words.
  — Kyle Smith, National Review, 21 Sep. 2017
• Bloom’s favorite subject: The human body freshly released from the grip of death, often flayed and purpling, flesh turned inside out.
  — Globe Staff, BostonGlobe.com, 1 Aug. 2019
• The critics who flay Ryan as a coward have never understood that his actions are a form of idealism.
  — Jonathan Chait, Daily Intelligencer, 11 Apr. 2018
• The main presidential bodyguard not on duty that night, William H. Crook, flayed Parker in his memoir.
  — Petula Dvorak, Washington Post, 18 July 2024
• One is contested on grass as scores of limbs flay about for 90 minutes in front of thousands of passionate onlookers.
  — Don Riddell and Daniel Gallan, CNN, 21 Aug. 2019
• Since then, the U.S. president has continued to flay China for the massive trade imbalance between the two nations.
  — Tim Culpan | Bloomberg, Washington Post, 5 Mar. 2019
• At El Submarino, the bluish raw shrimp are flayed down the middle and fanned out in a molcajete, over cucumber and beneath red onion and avocado.
  — Hannah Goldfield, The New Yorker, 23 June 2023
• They are usually flayed in the media with a torrent of negative coverage.
  — John Fund, National Review, 8 Oct. 2017
• For his part, Mr. Cunningham is happy to flay Mr. Tillis, but has little appetite to elevate the national stakes.
  — Jonathan Martin, New York Times, 23 Sep. 2020
• These days, 25 Water Street is getting flayed and disemboweled.
  — Curbed, 24 Jan. 2024
• And Billy is recruiting more townspeople as hosts, all with the aim of building a creature that can take out Eleven once and for all, leaving it free to flay the minds of pretty much everyone else alive.
  — Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 15 July 2019
• The caller reported a man talking to himself, staring at girls and flaying his arms everywhere.
  — Staff Report, Orange County Register, 6 June 2017
• By breed, Sonny is a pariah, or desi, dog, slender, keen, and honey-coloured, about 35 pounds, with a narrow rib cage and flayed, Iggy Pop–like musculature.
  — James Parker, The Atlantic, 13 June 2024
• The work hangs in canny dialogue with the museum’s collections: an 18th-century still life on the opposite wall is a reminder that flayed flesh has long been a subject of art.
  — Emily Watlington, ARTnews.com, 19 July 2024

Last Updated: 22 Dec 2024