defleece
defleece verb: to remove the fleece from.
Verb
defleece (third-person singular simple present defleeces, present participle defleecing, simple past and past participle defleeced)
- To remove the fleece from.
- At that point, the fiber breaks easily and the whole fleece can be separated at the skinline, leaving the sheep completely bare. By grasping a handful of wool and rolling it back, a worker can defleece a sheep quickly and systematically without strain on himself, discomfort to the sheep, or wastage...1973, Consumer Products by Design
- It is difficult to imagine anyone disbelieving that machines fly safely and regularly around the world, but how many people believe that robots will eventually be programmed to shear sheep or that sheep will be fed a pill to defleece them?1980 September, Paul Hudson, “Technology Brings Home the Wool Harvest”, in New Scientist, volume 87, number 1218, page 768
Forms of defleece
| third-person singular present | defleeces |
|---|---|
| present participle | defleecing |
| past participle | defleeced |
| past | defleeced |
Origin of defleece
From de- + fleece.
Questions about defleece
- What does defleece mean?
- Defleece means to remove the fleece from.
- What part of speech is defleece?
- Defleece is a verb.
- What is the past tense of defleece?
- The past tense of defleece is defleeced.
Words near defleece in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: defleece (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “defleece.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/defleece. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.