Talk:The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle

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Withered shanks
The phrase seemed to me one of very few where i'd heard "shanks" refer to human legs, and made me think i might recall it from Shakespeare. It appears in Hawthorne's travel letters, and in Lord Jim (perhaps my actual exposure to it) but also (and earlier) in this work. Nearly a thousand Google hits, which strikes me as too many for chance to explain it. Was Smollet influential enuf to have stuck it into the minds of Hawthorne, and (perhaps via him) Conrad and the translator of Death in Venice? Is there an earlier use known? --Jerzy•t 07:38, 13 June 2012 (UTC)


 * The word "shank" is used in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: "longe shonkes" (c. 1375 AD). The Online Etymology Dictionary says it was used even earlier, in Old English: Old English sceanca "leg, shank, shinbone," specifically, the part of the leg from the knee to the ankle, from Proto-Germanic *skankon- (source also of Middle Low German schenke, German schenkel "shank, leg"), perhaps literally "that which bends," from PIE root *skeng- "crooked"..." http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=shank Jk180 (talk) 19:47, 18 June 2017 (UTC)