shank
/ˈʃeɪ̯ŋk/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.07 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A redshank or greenshank, various species of Old World wading birds in the genus Tringa having distinctly colored legs.
Colloquial
noun
The handle of a pair of shears, connecting the ride to the neck.
noun
The center part of a fishhook between the eye and the hook, the 'hook' being the curved part that bends toward the point.
noun
A protruding part of an object, by which it is or can be attached.
Example Sentences
- "Edward I of England was nicknamed Edward Longshanks."
- "His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide / For his shrunk shank […]"
- "The honest, rough piece of iron, so simple in appearance, has more parts than the human body has limbs: the ring, the stock, the crown, the flukes, the palms, the shank. All this, according to the journalist, is “cast” when a ship arriving at an anchorage is brought up."
- "This twist drill has a reduced shank so that it can be used even in a small chuck."
- "To a good golfer a shank is disgracefuller than being dead drunk or in jail."
- "LBC's tryna blackball me / And tryna blame your boy for knife crime (Like, what?) / I don't use a shank, I got money in the bank / Man, I'd rather do a drive-by"
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English sceonke, schank, schanke, shanke, schonke, sconke, sschanke, from Old English sċanca, sċeanca, sċeonca (“leg”), from Proto-West Germanic *skankō, from Proto-Germanic *skankô (“shank; thigh”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)keng- (“to hobble, limp; to tilt”). Cognates Cognate with West Frisian skonk (“leg”), Dutch schenkel (“shank”), German and Luxembourgish Schenkel (“thigh”), Danish skank (“shank; leg”), Norwegian Nynorsk skank, skonk (“thigh; foot”), Swedish skank, skånk (“leg”); also Cornish kamm (“pace, step”), Irish céim (“pace, step”), Manx keim (“degree, pace, stage, step”), Scottish Gaelic ceum (“pace, step”), Welsh cam (“pace, step”), Greek σκάω (skáo), σκάζω (skázo, “to burst, explode”), Bulgarian and Macedonian шега́ (šegá, “jest, joke; prank”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈʃeɪ̯ŋk/