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  1. redshank love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. An Old World wading bird (Tringa totanus) having long red legs.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. The fieldfare, Turdus pilaris.
  2. n. A wading bird of the family Scolopacidæ and genus Totanus, having red shanks. The common redshank is T. calidris, about 11 inches long, common in many parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The spotted redshank, T. fuscus, is a related species of similar distribution. Compare greenshank, yellowshank.
  3. n. The hooded or black-headed gull, Chroïcocephalus ridibundus: so called from its red legs: more fully called redshank gull and red-legged gull or mew.
  4. n. plural A name given in contempt to Scottish Highlanders, and formerly to native Irish, in allusion to their dress leaving the legs exposed.

Wiktionary

  1. n. Either of two species of Old World wading bird in the genus Tringa that have long red legs.
  2. n. obsolete, derogatory A bare-legged person; one of the Scottish Highlanders, who wore kilts.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. A common Old World limicoline bird (Totanus calidris), having the legs and feet pale red. The spotted redshank (Totanus fuscus) is larger, and has orange-red legs. Called also redshanks, redleg, and clee.
  2. n. The fieldfare.
  3. n. A bare-legged person; -- a contemptuous appellation formerly given to the Scotch Highlanders, in allusion to their bare legs.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. a common Old World wading bird with long red legs

Etymologies

  1. red +‎ shank (Wiktionary)

Examples

  • “A hooded crow, large and muscular beside the smaller waders, stabs its way through the pile, not once bothering to look up, while a single redshank steps daintily across the weed's surface in search of a likely area to pick over.”

    The Guardian: Country diary: Benbecula

  • “Some, such as the oystercatchers, redshank and curlew, were still finding food by probing with their beaks.”

    The Guardian: Country diary: Burghead, Moray

  • “A whitethroat flies out over the salt marsh from its grassed nesting bank on the most recent seawall, singing its dry ratchet song over the slippery green ooze; a redshank agitated by a marsh harrier towers inland over emerald wheat fields calling its bleak mud-flat alarm.”

    Simon & Schuster: A Year on the Wing

  • “The most abundant are dunlin (Calidris alpina), bar-tailed godwit (Limosa lapponica), curlew sandpiper (Calidris ferruginea) and redshank (Tringa totanus) all with populations of over 100,000 birds.”

    Atlantic coastal desert

  • “Birds with restricted range include the spotted redshank (Tringa erythropus), Jananese Robin (Erithacus akahige), Bull-headed Strike (Lanius bucephalus), and the Forest Wagtail (Motacilla lutea).”

    South Sakhalin-Kurile mixed forests

  • “The haunts of the mallard, the snipe, the redshank, and the bittern, have been drained equally with the summer dwellings of the lapwing and the curlew.”

    The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 19, No. 531, January 28, 1832

  • “As the car jolts along past "Hag's Valley," a dozen curlews take wing, and a little further on the shrill cry of the redshank strikes on the ear.”

    Disturbed Ireland Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81.

  • “Wild fowl in great variety visit the island, and the low-lying land within the sea-wall is the favourite haunt of many sea-birds; and several varieties of plover, the redshank, greenshank, sandpiper, and snipe may be found there.”

    Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch

  • “Eggs, on the other hand, like those of the house sparrow, redshank and some of the smaller warblers, are so easily confused with those of allied species that Lord Lilford's caution is by no means superfluous.”

    Birds in the Calendar

  • “Kearton somewhere relates how he once induced a blackbird to sit on the eggs of a thrush, and a lapwing on those of a redshank.”

    Birds in the Calendar

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hypernyms (1)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. sandpiper

reverse dictionary (20)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. sand-cock
  2. shake
  3. redshank
  4. clee
  1. wood-sandpiper
  2. yellowshank
  3. pool-snipe
  4. barker
  1. gambet
  2. pellile
  3. pool snipe
  4. redleg
  1. sand cock
  2. teuk
  3. arenaria
  4. calidris
  1. chevalier
  2. fedoa
  3. redlegs
  4. totanus

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  • knitandpurl "We stand at the river's edge, the point where the Darent is absorbed. Or what we take to be the edge: pipings of redshank, a slurping earth-soup."
    London Orbital by Iain Sinclair, p 452 of the Penguin paperback edition Feb 12, 2012

  • avivamagnolia
    1. A common Old World limicoline bird (Totanus calidris), having the legs and feet pale red. The spotted redshank (T. Fuscus) is larger, and has orange-red legs. Called also redshanks, redleg, and clee. The fieldfare.

    2. A bare-legged person; a contemptuous appellation formerly given to the Scotch Highlanders, in allusion to their bare legs. Jan 19, 2009

  • qroqqa common synonym of a plant I previously knew as persicaria Jul 3, 2008

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‘redshank’ has been looked up 1242 times, loved by 1 person, added to 8 lists, commented on 3 times, and has a Scrabble score of 16.