Word.ws English Dictionary

Thin Red Line

Thin Red Line proper noun: the members of the 93rd Regiment of the British Army who met the charge of the Russian cavalry at the Battle of Balaclava in 1854.

Proper noun

the Thin Red Line

  1. (historical) The members of the 93rd Regiment of the British Army who met the charge of the Russian cavalry at the Battle of Balaclava in 1854.
  2. (broadly) Any thinly spread military unit holding firm against attack.

Origin of Thin Red Line

William H. Russell, Times Correspondent at the Battle of Balaclava, wrote that he could see nothing between the charging Russians and the British regiment's base of operations at Balaclava but the “thin red streak tipped with a line of steel”. The condensed phrase “the thin red line” came to represent British composure in battle.

Questions about Thin Red Line

What does Thin Red Line mean?
Thin Red Line means the members of the 93rd Regiment of the British Army who met the charge of the Russian cavalry at the Battle of Balaclava in 1854.
What part of speech is Thin Red Line?
Thin Red Line is a proper noun.

Words near Thin Red Line in the dictionary

  1. thin layer chromatography
  2. thin on the ground
  3. thin out
  4. thin paper
  5. thin papers
  6. Thin Red Line
  7. Thin Rind
  8. Thin Rinds
  9. thin sandwich course
  10. thin sandwich courses
  11. thin sandwich degree

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Thin Red Line (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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