Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Either of two migratory shorebirds (Tringa totanus or T. erythropus) of the Eastern Hemisphere, having long red legs.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The fieldfare, Turdus pilaris.
- noun A wading bird of the family Scolopacidæ and genus Totanus, having red shanks.
- noun 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. - noun plural A name given in contempt to Scottish Highlanders, and formerly to native Irish, in allusion to their dress leaving the legs exposed.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun 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 alsoredshanks ,redleg , andclee . - noun The fieldfare.
- noun A bare-legged person; -- a contemptuous appellation formerly given to the Scotch Highlanders, in allusion to their bare legs.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Either of two species of
Old World wading bird in the genusTringa that have long red legs. - noun obsolete, derogatory A bare-legged person; one of the
Scottish Highlanders , who worekilts .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a common Old World wading bird with long red legs
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Some, such as the oystercatchers, redshank and curlew, were still finding food by probing with their beaks.
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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.
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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.
A Year on the Wing TIM DEE 2009
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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.
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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).
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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 Various
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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. Bernard H. Becker
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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 Sidney Heath 1907
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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.
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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.
qroqqa commented on the word redshank
common synonym of a plant I previously knew as persicaria
July 3, 2008
avivamagnolia commented on the word redshank
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.
January 19, 2009
knitandpurl commented on the word redshank
"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
February 12, 2012