redcap

Valid in Scrabble

Scrabble points: 11
Words With Friends: 13
Letters: 6

Definition of redcap

5 senses · 1 part of speech · etymology included

noun

(British)A member of the Royal Military Police a unit in the British army.

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noun

(British)A member of the Royal Military Police a unit in the British army.
(US)A porter in a US railway station.
(British, archaic)A European goldfinch, Eurasian goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis).
(British)A type of evil goblin or imp.

“1876: Porter & Coates (pub.), Reliques of Ancient English Poetry Lord Soulis he sat in Hermitage Castle, And beside him Old Redcap sly; — "Now, tell me, thou sprite, who are meikle of might, The death that I must die?"”
“"What's a Brownie?" you say. Oh, it's a kind of a sort of a Bogle, but it isn't so cruel as a Redcap! What! you don't know what's a Bogle or a Redcap!”
“After boggarts, they studied Red Caps, nasty little goblinlike creatures that lurked where there had been bloodshed […]”
A breed of poultry.

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

Etymology

See full etymology

From red + cap. In sense of "porter", 1890s US; compare contemporary Japanese 赤帽 (akabō), Chinese 小紅帽 /小红帽 (Xiǎo Hóng Mào). On Labor Day, 1890, John Williams, an African-American railway porter, tied a red ribbon to his black uniform cap to stand out from the crowd at Grand Central Terminal. The strategy was so successful that it was soon adopted by others in the profession, leading to the synecdochic use of redcap as a term for all railway porters.