This verb occurs only in Lamentations' harrowing description of Jerusalem's famine victims. The root conveys the physical contraction of skin becoming tight and dried upon the bones—a visceral image of starvation's effects. Cognate languages associate the root with binding or shackling, suggesting the constraining, constricting nature of this physical deterioration. The Spanish 'pegado' (stuck, adhered) captures how the skin clings unnaturally to the skeleton.