to add additional substance, depth or comprehensiveness to something, as if performing a strange form of reverse butchery1; suggests that an initial work product is incomplete in its current form, as in “Let’s flesh out the Asia-Pacific marketing plan before the next update meeting”; in everyday usage this term is quite often mixed up with the phrase flush out, which has the unrelated sense of causing something to be revealed, although despite this conflicting meaning it is generally understood as identical to flesh out; var. put meat on the bone
- As in the creation of Frankenstein’s monster, though one hopes with more congenial effects. ↩