"Thin Red Line" meaning in English

See Thin Red Line in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Forms: the Thin Red Line [canonical]
Etymology: William H. Russell, Times Correspondent at the Battle of Balaclava wrote that he could see nothing between the charging Russians and the British regiment's base of operations at Balaclava but the “thin red streak tipped with a line of steel”. The condensed phrase “the thin red line” came to represent British composure in battle. Head templates: {{head|en|noun|head=the Thin Red Line}} the Thin Red Line
  1. (historical) The members the 93rd Regiment of the British Army who met the charge of the Russian cavalry at the Battle of Balaclava in 1854. Tags: historical Categories (topical): Collectives, Military units Related terms: green line, red line, single yellow line, thin blue line
    Sense id: en-Thin_Red_Line-en-noun-~fkggxPb Disambiguation of Collectives: 72 28 Disambiguation of Military units: 73 27 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 62 38
  2. (by extension) Any thinly spread military unit holding firm against attack. Tags: broadly
    Sense id: en-Thin_Red_Line-en-noun-gaodVy0u

Download JSON data for Thin Red Line meaning in English (2.1kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "William H. Russell, Times Correspondent at the Battle of Balaclava wrote that he could see nothing between the charging Russians and the British regiment's base of operations at Balaclava but the “thin red streak tipped with a line of steel”. The condensed phrase “the thin red line” came to represent British composure in battle.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "the Thin Red Line",
      "tags": [
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      "name": "head"
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  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "62 38",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
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            "Entry maintenance"
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          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "72 28",
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
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          "orig": "en:Collectives",
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            "Fundamental"
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          "source": "w+disamb"
        },
        {
          "_dis": "73 27",
          "kind": "topical",
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            "Human",
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          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The members the 93rd Regiment of the British Army who met the charge of the Russian cavalry at the Battle of Balaclava in 1854."
      ],
      "id": "en-Thin_Red_Line-en-noun-~fkggxPb",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(historical) The members the 93rd Regiment of the British Army who met the charge of the Russian cavalry at the Battle of Balaclava in 1854."
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "_dis1": "74 26",
          "word": "green line"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "74 26",
          "word": "red line"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "74 26",
          "word": "single yellow line"
        },
        {
          "_dis1": "74 26",
          "word": "thin blue line"
        }
      ],
      "tags": [
        "historical"
      ]
    },
    {
      "glosses": [
        "Any thinly spread military unit holding firm against attack."
      ],
      "id": "en-Thin_Red_Line-en-noun-gaodVy0u",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(by extension) Any thinly spread military unit holding firm against attack."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "broadly"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "wikipedia": [
    "The Thin Red Line (Battle of Balaclava)"
  ],
  "word": "Thin Red Line"
}
{
  "categories": [
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    "English lemmas",
    "English multiword terms",
    "English nouns",
    "en:Collectives",
    "en:Military units"
  ],
  "etymology_text": "William H. Russell, Times Correspondent at the Battle of Balaclava wrote that he could see nothing between the charging Russians and the British regiment's base of operations at Balaclava but the “thin red streak tipped with a line of steel”. The condensed phrase “the thin red line” came to represent British composure in battle.",
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "the Thin Red Line",
      "tags": [
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      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "noun",
        "head": "the Thin Red Line"
      },
      "expansion": "the Thin Red Line",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "green line"
    },
    {
      "word": "red line"
    },
    {
      "word": "single yellow line"
    },
    {
      "word": "thin blue line"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with historical senses"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "The members the 93rd Regiment of the British Army who met the charge of the Russian cavalry at the Battle of Balaclava in 1854."
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(historical) The members the 93rd Regiment of the British Army who met the charge of the Russian cavalry at the Battle of Balaclava in 1854."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "historical"
      ]
    },
    {
      "glosses": [
        "Any thinly spread military unit holding firm against attack."
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(by extension) Any thinly spread military unit holding firm against attack."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "broadly"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "wikipedia": [
    "The Thin Red Line (Battle of Balaclava)"
  ],
  "word": "Thin Red Line"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-04-26 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-04-21 using wiktextract (93a6c53 and 21a9316). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.