Meaning
A thinly stretched line of defenders holding out against overwhelming force; by extension, any small band standing firm as the last barrier against a threat. The phrase romanticises resistance - discipline and courage making up for numbers - and is now applied to firefighters, peacekeepers, and border guards as readily as to soldiers. Heroic and sometimes ironic in register; in the policing adaptation 'the thin blue line' the colour changed but the stretched-defence image survived. Regional use: General English (British battlefield origin).
Origin
From the Crimean War. On 25 October 1854 at Balaclava, about 500 men of the 93rd (Sutherland) Highlanders under Sir Colin Campbell, judged too raw to form the regulation infantry square, were drawn up only two ranks deep and repelled a Russian cavalry charge with volleys at 800 and then 500 yards. The Times correspondent W. H. Russell, the first modern war reporter, described the sight in his dispatch of 14 November 1854 as 'a thin red streak tipped with a line of steel', afterwards condensing it himself to the thin red line. Kipling sealed the shorter form in the language in 'Tommy', in Barrack-Room Ballads (1892), where the scorned soldier is hailed as the 'Thin red line of 'eroes' when the drums begin to roll. Robert Gibb's 1881 painting of the action hangs in Edinburgh Castle, and James Jones borrowed the phrase for his 1962 novel of Guadalcanal, filmed in 1964 and again in 1998.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- the thin blue line (policing adaptation)
- the thin red streak tipped with a line of steel (Russell's original wording)
- thin red line
Usage Examples
- A thin red line of volunteer firefighters stood between the ridge fire and the town's water tanks.
- The audit found a thin red line of compliance officers holding back three years of corner-cutting.
- Historians still argue whether the thin red line at Balaclava was tactics or nerve.