Word.ws English Dictionary

flesh one's maiden sword

flesh one's maiden sword verb: to experience or succeed in combat or struggle for the first time, as in the military or in politics.

Verb

flesh one's maiden sword (third-person singular simple present fleshes one's maiden sword, present participle fleshing one's maiden sword, simple past and past participle fleshed one's maiden sword)

  1. (dated, idiomatic) To experience or succeed in combat or struggle for the first time, as in the military or in politics.
    • Come brother Iohn, full brauely hast thou flesht / Thy mayden sword.c. 1597 (date written), [William Shakespeare], The History of Henrie the Fourth; […], quarto edition, London: […] P[eter] S[hort] for Andrew Wise, […], published 1598, →OCLC, [Act V, scene iv]
    • Well, Lord Althorpe has last night fleshed his maiden sword as a finance minister—and the result, I am sorry to say, is a failure.1831, “Speakers and Speeches in Parliament, No. IV”, in The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, volume 31, page 222

Forms of flesh one's maiden sword

third-person singular presentfleshes one's maiden sword
present participlefleshing one's maiden sword
past participlefleshed one's maiden sword
pastfleshed one's maiden sword

Origin of flesh one's maiden sword

Literally, to shed blood for the first time with a new sword; see flesh (“bury in flesh”), maiden (“virgin”), sword.

Questions about flesh one's maiden sword

What does flesh one's maiden sword mean?
Flesh one's maiden sword means to experience or succeed in combat or struggle for the first time, as in the military or in politics.
What part of speech is flesh one's maiden sword?
Flesh one's maiden sword is a verb.
What is the past tense of flesh one's maiden sword?
The past tense of flesh one's maiden sword is fleshed one's maiden sword.

Words near flesh one's maiden sword in the dictionary

  1. flesh fly
  2. flesh glue
  3. flesh loaf
  4. flesh loaves
  5. flesh on the bones
  6. flesh one's maiden sword
  7. flesh out
  8. flesh tunnel
  9. flesh tunnels
  10. flesh wound
  11. flesh wounds

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flesh one's maiden sword (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “flesh one's maiden sword.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/flesh_one%27s_maiden_sword. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.