excarnation

English

Noun

excarnation (countable and uncountable, plural excarnations)

1. The act of removing flesh.
2. The burial practice of removing (or causing to be removed) the flesh and organs of the dead, leaving only the bones, especially the practice of laying out corpses for vultures to strip bare.
   • 1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co., page 144:

     Vultures seem to have been used for a funeral practice of excarnation: after the flesh had been cleaned from the bones, the bones were interred in the shrines.

Related terms

• excarnate