shank
Pluralshanks
Pluralshanks
Formsshanks, shanking, shanked
- 1The lower leg, the section running from the knee down to the ankle; the shin.
His trousers were too short and showed a pale stretch of shank above each sock.
The heron stood motionless on its thin shanks at the edge of the pond.
Similarshin
Note
Most of the word's other meanings borrow the image of this one, the straight stretch of leg below the knee. Old English sċanca meant leg, and German Schenkel is a cousin. It survives in nicknames such as Longshanks, given to Edward I of England, and in Jaques's picture of old age in As You Like It: youthful hose "a world too wide / For his shrunk shank".
- 2Meat cut from the lower leg of an animal.
Braised shank is cheap, but it needs hours in the oven to turn tender.
The restaurant serves veal shanks over creamy polenta.
Similarshin
- 3To knife someone, typically with a crude blade fashioned from whatever is at hand.
Rumors spread that a gang leader had ordered someone to shank the informant.
Someone shanked him with a sharpened toothbrush, and he spent a week in the prison infirmary.
Note
The verb comes straight from the homemade blade: to shank someone is to stab them with one, and the word still carries the prison yard with it. In news writing and ordinary speech the neutral word is stab, and the slang verb is best kept to dialogue or quotation.
- 4An improvised stabbing weapon, originally one made by prisoners.
During the search, officers confiscated three shanks fashioned from bed springs.
The inmate kept a shank taped inside his shoe.
Similarshiv
Note
The name may come from the steel strip in a shoe, which a prisoner could grind to a point. Born in prisons, the word has moved into street slang: Stormzy, on Gang Signs & Prayer (2017), raps that he does not use one. Shiv is its close synonym, and both are slang; in neutral writing, homemade knife is the plain phrase.
- 5A straight, narrow part of an object, such as the shaft of a key or an anchor.
The locksmith filed a new notch into the shank of the key.
Barnacles had crusted the shanks of both anchors by the end of the season.
Note
On an anchor the shank is the long central shaft. Joseph Conrad, listing the anchor's parts in The Mirror of the Sea, remarks that this simple-looking iron has more parts than the human body has limbs: the ring, the stock, the crown, the flukes, the palms and the shank.
- 6A badly mishit golf shot struck off the hosel, where the clubhead is joined to the shaft.
A nervous shank on the eighteenth hole cost him the tournament.
Few things rattle a golfer like a shank that shoots off almost sideways.
Note
Golfers call the struck spot the hosel, the socket where the head meets the shaft, and hitting it sends the ball off almost sideways. The shot carries a stigma out of all proportion: The Esquire Treasury (1953) ranks it as disgracefuller than being dead drunk or in jail. The verb names the same mishit, so a golfer shanks the ball and hits a shank.
- 7To mishit a golf ball with the part of the club head joined to the shaft.
Under pressure, even professionals can shank a simple wedge shot.
She shanked her approach into the crowd, scattering spectators.
Similarmishit
- 8A projecting part of an object by which it is, or can be, attached to something else.
This router bit has a half-inch shank, so it needs the larger collet.
The blade's shank fits into the wooden handle and is held by two rivets.
Similarshaft
- 9To hit or kick a ball off in a direction one did not intend.
The striker shanked his volley wide of the post with the goal at his mercy.
Punters who shank a kick in the fourth quarter rarely hear the end of it.
Note
Outside golf the word loosens to any ball that comes off the wrong part of a foot or racket and goes somewhere unplanned. It is chiefly a word of tennis, soccer and American football, and commentators use it for the miss that wastes a good chance, as when a striker shanks his shot horribly across the face of goal.
- 10To pull down or remove someone else's pants, especially as a joke.
At summer camp, the older kids would sneak up and shank anyone wearing sweatpants.
Someone shanked him during the team photo, and the picture shows him grabbing for his shorts.
Note
This is prank slang, and because it shares its form with the prison word for stabbing, it needs a clear setting, such as a pool, a gym class or a summer camp, to be read the right way. Depants and debag name the same trick.
- 11The end or remainder of something, especially of a period of time.
By the shank of the winter, the woodpile had dwindled to a few damp logs.
She spent the shank of her vacation, its last three days, visiting her parents.
Similarend, remainder, rest, tail
Oppositebeginning, start (entry)
Note
A stretch of time can have its shank at either end. Here it is what remains, the tail of a winter or of a vacation, while the opposite use means the main part or the start. Only context tells the two apart, so when the difference matters, the end of the evening or the start of it is the clearer choice.
- 12The principal part, or the opening stretch, of a period of time such as an evening.
Stay for another round; it's barely the shank of the evening.
Farmers do their heaviest work in the shank of the morning, before the heat sets in.
Similarbeginning, start (entry)
Oppositeend
Note
Its home is a fixed phrase, the shank of the evening, said to a guest who is leaving too soon: the night is still young. Amanda uses it exactly so in Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie: "Why, it's only the shank of the evening, Mr. O'Connor!" The shank of the morning works the same way; since the "tail end" meaning exists too, context decides which part is meant.
- 13The central part of a fishhook, between the eye and the curved part that bends toward the point.
Slide the bait up the shank until it covers the eye.
Long-shank hooks make it easier to unhook a fish that has swallowed the bait.
- 14A loop on the back of a button, forming the eye by which it is sewn on.
Buttons with a shank sit slightly away from the fabric, leaving room for a thick coat.
The shank snapped off, and the button rolled under the sofa.
- 15The narrow part of a shoe's sole beneath the instep, joining the broader front section to the heel.
The outsole is thick at the toe and heel but much thinner at the shank.
The cobbler replaced the worn front of the sole and left the shank and heel untouched.
Note
The narrow stretch of sole under the instep bridges the arch rather than resting on the ground, which is why shoemakers stiffen it with a metal strip of the same name. It joins the broad front of the sole to the heel, so it takes the strain whenever the shoe flexes in the middle.
- 16A metal strip set into the waist of a shoe to strengthen it.
Without a steel shank, the boot's sole twisted every time he climbed a ladder.
Workers glued the metal shanks into place before the outsoles went on.
Note
The fuller name shankpiece keeps the strip apart from the part of the sole it reinforces. Set along the shoe's waist, it stops that unsupported stretch from sagging or twisting, which matters most in work boots that carry a person's weight on a ladder rung.
- 17The handle of a pair of shears, the part that joins the ride to the neck.
The shearer gripped the shanks of his hand shears and clipped the fleece close to the skin.
The blacksmith straightened the bent shank so the blades would meet cleanly again.
- 18On a curb bit, the metal arm below the mouthpiece to which the reins attach; its length sets how severe the bit's leverage is.
Trainers often start a young horse on a bit with a short shank before trying anything stronger.
Because the shanks are so long, even a gentle pull on the reins puts strong pressure on the horse's mouth.
- 19To provide a button with a shank, a loop that forms its eye.
Tailors shank the buttons on heavy wool coats so they sit above the thick fabric.
The factory bought a new system for shanking the buttons on jackets and blouses.
- 20To fit the shank into a shoe during its manufacture.
Workers who shank shoes by hand glue each metal strip along the bottom before the sole is attached.
The plant hired extra hands to shank the spring line of boots.
Note
The factory job comes with its own agent noun: the workers who glue the metal strips onto shoe bottoms are shankers. Deborah Boe's poem Factory Work (1986) describes sliding the backs of the shanks in glue, and a contest to see which shankers shanked fastest.
- 21Of a leaf, flower, or capsule: to fall off because disease has attacked the stalk supporting it; usually followed by off.
Half the young grapes shanked off when stem rot spread through the vineyard.
In a damp greenhouse, the seed pods began to shank off as the stalks blackened.
- 22A large ladle for molten metal, fitted with long bars by which it is handled.
At the foundry, two men carried the brimming shank between them by its long bars.
The casters tipped their shanks slowly so the molten brass filled every corner of the molds.
Similarladle
- 23A pair of flat-nosed pliers that opticians use to chip away the edges of glass pieces until they are round.
The optician worked around the glass with a shank, nipping off tiny chips until the piece was nearly round.
Every bench in the old lens shop had its own shank and a pile of square glass blanks.
- 24In Doric architecture, the space between two of the channels cut into a triglyph.
The architect's drawing marked the width of each shank between the triglyph's channels.
On the restored frieze, the shanks catch the light while the channels between them stay in shadow.
Note
Classical writers called these flat bands thighs, femur in Latin and meros in Greek; English keeps the bodily image but moves it down to the lower leg. On a Doric frieze they are the raised strips that catch the light between the shadowed channels of each triglyph.
- 25The body of a piece of printing type, the part between the shoulder and the foot.
The compositor set each piece so that every shank stood square in the stick.
Shanks worn thin by years of use made the letters sit unevenly on the press.
Note
The term comes from the hand-set printing shop and is now dated. Printers who still work with metal type usually call the same part the body, keeping shoulder and foot for the parts above and below it, so body is the safer word for a modern reader.
- 26A redshank or greenshank: any of several Old World wading birds of the genus Tringa with distinctly colored legs.
Birders on the estuary counted a dozen shanks probing the mud at low tide.
A shank burst up from the creek, its bright legs trailing as it flew off.
Note
Birders clip the full names, redshank and greenshank, to plain shank when it does not matter which bird is which. Both names describe the birds by the lower leg, red or green. The short form is casual field talk; in writing, give the full name.
- 27To travel on foot.
With no money for the fare, the lads shanked the whole way to the fair.
If the pony is still lame in the morning, we'll shank over the hill to the village.
Similarwalk
Note
Ulster speech made a verb out of the leg: to shank is to let your own legs carry you. The word is archaic as well as regional, so outside historical or Ulster writing the plain word is walk.
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Origin
From Middle English schanke, from Old English sċanca ("leg"), from Proto-West Germanic *skankō and Proto-Germanic *skankô, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)keng-. It is related to Dutch schenkel and German Schenkel ("shank, leg"); compare Ancient Greek σκάζω (skázō, "to limp").