pound of flesh
pound of flesh noun: something which is owed and which will be hurtful or difficult to provide; a debt owed to someone who is merciless and demanding.
Noun
pound of flesh (plural pounds of flesh)
- Something which is owed and which will be hurtful or difficult to provide; a debt owed to someone who is merciless and demanding.
- You must be under the impression that I'm one of these damned New England sharks that get their pound of flesh off the widow and orphan.1915 October, Willa Sibert Cather, chapter I, in The Song of the Lark, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton Mifflin Company […], →OCLC, part V (Doctor Archie’s Adventure), page 348
- When I wake up in my makeup / It's too early for that dress / Wilted and faded somewhere in Hollywood / I'm glad I came here with your pound of flesh1998, “Celebrity Skin”, performed by Hole
Forms of pound of flesh
| plural | pounds of flesh |
|---|
Origin of pound of flesh
From Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, in which Antonio literally owes a pound of his flesh to the moneylender Shylock.
Questions about pound of flesh
- What does pound of flesh mean?
- Pound of flesh means something which is owed and which will be hurtful or difficult to provide; a debt owed to someone who is merciless and demanding.
- What part of speech is pound of flesh?
- Pound of flesh is a noun.
- What is the plural of pound of flesh?
- The plural of pound of flesh is pounds of flesh.
Words near pound of flesh in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: pound of flesh (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:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-pound of flesh.ogg.
Cite this entry: “pound of flesh.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pound_of_flesh. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.