Word.ws English Dictionary

red shank

red shank is the alternative form of redshank.

Meaning of redshank

Noun

redshank (plural redshanks)

  1. Any of two species of Old World wading bird in the genus Tringa that have long red legs.
    • Saltings ringing with the redshank's cry.1967, J. A. Baker, The Peregrine, page 41
  2. Any member of the species Ceratodon purpureus of moss.
    Synonyms:
    fire moss, purple horn toothed moss
  3. Lady's thumb or redleg (Persicaria maculosa), an herb in the buckwheat family.
  4. (derogatory, obsolete) A bare-legged person; one of the Scottish Highlanders, who wore kilts.
    • Much worse then the former; for who that is experienced in those partes and knoweth not that the Oneales are neerely alied unto the Mac Oneales of Scotland, and to the Earle of Argill, from whom they use to have all ther succors of those Scottes and Redshanks?1997 [1596], Edmund Spenser, A Veue of the Present State of Ireland, archived from the original on 18 Apr 2019

Forms of red shank

pluralred shanks

Questions about red shank

What is red shank the alternative form of?
Red shank is the alternative form of redshank.

Words near red shank in the dictionary

  1. red seaweeds
  2. red setter
  3. red setters
  4. red shale
  5. red shales
  6. red shank
  7. red shanks
  8. red shift
  9. red shifts
  10. red shirt
  11. red shirts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: red shank (page history and authors); redshank (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.

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Cite this entry: “red shank.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/red_shank. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.