LEATHERY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does leathery mean? 

• LEATHERY (adjective)
  The adjective LEATHERY has 1 sense:

1. resembling or made to resemble leather; tough but pliable

  Familiarity information: LEATHERY used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• LEATHERY (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Resembling or made to resemble leather; tough but pliable

Synonyms:

coriaceous; leathered; leatherlike; leathery

Similar:

tough (resistant to cutting or chewing)

Derivation:

leather (an animal skin made smooth and flexible by removing the hair and then tanning)

 Context examples 

In an instant the nearest male gave a shrill, whistling cry, and flapped its twenty-foot span of leathery wings as it soared up into the air.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The team discovered lymphatic vessels in the dura, the leathery outer coating of the brain.

(NIH researchers uncover drain pipes in our brains, National Institutes of Health)

One could but say that it was black and leathery and that it bore some resemblance to a dwarfish, human figure.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The researchers found soft tissue around the dinosaur's flanks and across its arms, showing it had folds of leathery skin that would have resembled wings.

(Second Bat-Like Dinosaur Discovered in China, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

His face, however, was tanned of a dull yellow tint, with a leathery, poreless look, which spoke of rough outdoor doings, and the little pointed beard which he wore, in deference to the prevailing fashion, was streaked and shot with gray.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

In its frozen state it was more like strips of galvanized iron, and when a dog wrestled it into his stomach it thawed into thin and innutritious leathery strings and into a mass of short hair, irritating and indigestible.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

Its strange shawl suddenly unfurled, spread, and fluttered as a pair of leathery wings.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It had sprung from the perch and was circling slowly round the Queen's Hall with a dry, leathery flapping of its ten-foot wings, while a putrid and insidious odor pervaded the room.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

All the bottom area round the water-edge was alive with their young ones, and with hideous mothers brooding upon their leathery, yellowish eggs.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Of course, said he, with his clumsy and ponderous sarcasm, Professor Summerlee will understand that when I speak of a pterodactyl I mean a stork—only it is the kind of stork which has no feathers, a leathery skin, membranous wings, and teeth in its jaws.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)