shanks' mare
shanks' mare noun: one's own feet used for walking.
Noun
shanks' mare (countable and uncountable, plural shanks' mares)
- One's own feet used for walking.
- A public exhibition of the velocipede [a predecessor of the bicycle] ... will never come into general use in competition with Shank's mare.1869. The Dubuque Daily Herald, Dubuque, Iowa, May 1869
- “Well! Well! Here's Aunt Cannie. Waiting for your car?”
“No suh, Mr. Henry. Shank's mare is plenty good fer me. I been ridin' dis ol' mare for more'n a hund'ed years.”1923, Harris Dickson, “The Proof”, in The Red Book Magazine, volume 41, number 6
Forms of shanks' mare
| plural | shanks' mares |
|---|---|
| alternative form | shanks's mare |
| alternative form | shank's mare |
| alternative form | shanks mare |
Origin of shanks' mare
Believed to be Scottish in origin and derives from shanks' nag (shanks-naig 1774), referring to the use of shank to refer to the part of the human leg between the knee and ankle. One theory cites "shank's mare" derived from a horse-drawn lawn mower, manufactured by Shanks & Company Ltd. (founded 1853) which required that the human operator walk behind the device to guide the horse; however, references to the phrase in Scottish literature pre-date the existence of the Shanks lawn mower.
Questions about shanks' mare
- What does shanks' mare mean?
- Shanks' mare means one's own feet used for walking.
- What part of speech is shanks' mare?
- Shanks' mare is a noun.
- What is the plural of shanks' mare?
- The plural of shanks' mare is shanks' mares.
Words near shanks' mare in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: shanks' mare (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: “shanks' mare.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shanks%27_mare. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.