ride shank’s mare
travel by foot
TRANSLATION
zu Fuß gehen, laufen, per pedes unterwegs sein, auf den eigenen Beinen, auf Schusters Rappen
STATISTICS
IN THE PRESS
"Going BY SHANKS MARE is an old mountain way of saying-you walked. In other words shanks mare is none other than your own feet. I’ve heard the old saying my whole life. I’ve mostly heard the phrase used when someone was making light of having to walk a long way when they didn’t intend to.
The Blind Pig and The Acorn (5th December 2025)
Did you
know?
ride shank’s mare (US), ride shank’s pony (UK)
idiom
- walking, as a way of traveling
- one's own legs
- one's legs as a means of transportation”
Cambridge Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, Collins English Dictionary
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PHRASE ORIGIN & USAGE
A shank originally meant the lower part of the leg, particularly the section between the knee and ankle. The word goes back to Old English sceanca, meaning a leg or shinbone, and is related to German Schenkel.
The expression is Scottish in origin. Before mare appeared, there was the wonderfully comic shanks-naig, recorded in 1774. Naig was a Scots form of nag, meaning a horse.
The later Shank's mare simply gives the imaginary horse a more conventional name: mare, a female horse.
The joke is therefore straightforward: I have no horse → I have Shank's horse → my own legs are the horse. The apostrophe can be misleading. Shank is not the name of an unfortunate woman called Mare, nor does the expression refer to a particular horse called Shank. It is a deliberately personified way of referring to one's own legs.
Several variants have existed, including shanks' mare, shanks's mare, shank's pony and the earlier shanks-naig. Today, British English more commonly uses shanks's pony, while shank's mare is especially associated with American English.
Helga & Paul Smith
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SYNONYMS
afoot, go by foot, foot it, hoof it, leg it, march, padding, per pedes, RIDE BY SHANK’S MARE (PONY), tramp, trek, trudge, walk, walk on foot
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SMUGGLE OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:
“Travelling by SHANK’S MARE is sometimes the healthiest form of transportation.”
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