subs. (B. E. and GROSE).—In pl. = the legs; GAMS (q.v.). TO SHANK IT (or TO RIDE SHANKS’S MARE, or NAG) = (1) to go on foot or by the MARYLEBONE STAGE (q.v.): and (2) to leave without ceremony (B. E. and GROSE).
1302–11. Political Songs [Camden Society], 223. He [King Edward I] with the longe SHONKES.
d. 1529. SKELTON [DYCE, Works, i. 117]. Your wynde schakyn SHANKKES … crokyd as a camoke. Ibid., 168 [T. L. KINGTON-OLIPHANT, The New English, i. 371. The word SHANK had not then the lowering idea of our days; it is applied to the limbs of Christ on the cross].
d. 1555. LYNDSAY, Ane Pleasant Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis [E.E.T.S. 469].
1598. FLORIO, A Worlde of Wordes, s.v. Gambe, legges or SHANKES.
1600. SHAKESPEARE, As You Like It, ii. 7, 161.
| His youthful hose well sav’d, a world too wide | |
| For his shrunk SHANK. |
1635. [GLAPTHORNE], Lady Mother [BULLEN’S, Old Plays, ii. 131]. But come, stir your SHANKS nimbly or Ile hough ye.
1785. BURNS, To William Simpson, Postcript.
| That faith, the youngsters took the sands | |
| Wi’ nimble SHANKS. |
1818. SCOTT, Rob Roy, xxii. Sitting on the bed, to rest his SHANKS, as he was pleased to express the accommodation which that posture afforded him.
1843. THACKERAY, The Irish Sketch-Book, xvi. Along the banks you see all sorts of strange figures washing all sorts of wonderful rags, with red petticoats and redder SHANKS standing in the stream.
1847. W. T. PORTER, ed., A Quarter Race in Kentucky, etc., 90. Dick and Jule had to ride SHANKS’ MAR’.
1855. C. KINGSLEY, Westward Ho! xv. “I am away for London town, to speak to Mr. Frank.” “To London? How wilt get there?” “On SHANKS HIS MARE,” said Jack, pointing to his bandy legs.
1857. TOM HOOD, Pen and Pencil Pictures, 118. Three pairs of woollen socks … will cherish thy lean SHANKS, old fellow!
1885. Chambers’s Journal, 2 May, 287. Your true swagsman detests the sight of a horse … give him SHANKS’ MARE.
1891. Licensed Victuallers’ Gazette, 9 Jan. The distance had choked off those whose only mode of locomotion was SHANKS’S MARE.
1891. W. C. RUSSELL, An Ocean Tragedy, 194. I could see his naked yellow SHANKS.
1891. Globe, 5 June, 3, 3. People would be deprived of their habitual method of locomotion. Some would solve the difficulty by staying at home. Others would resort to SHANKS’S PONY; and the minority to cabs.
1901. Daily Telegraph, 28 Oct., 10, 5. He was much more interested in two old-fashioned animals, the horse and another strange animal enjoying the name—the origin of which he had never yet been able to discover—of SHANKS’S PONY.
2. (colloquial).—The fag end.
1880. J. C. HARRIS, Uncle Remus, xv. Bimeby, to’rds de SHANK er de evenin’.
1888. W. A. PATON, Down the Islands, ch. v. The old Kentuckian who, in the ‘SHANKS of the evening,’ was wont to maintain there was no such thing as bad Kentucky whiskey.
