red line
- noun
- Jargon
:
línea roja
- The player shot the puck from just behind the red line to score a goal.
Examples
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In ice hockey, the red line divides the rink into two offensive zones for each team.
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They gotta go back all the way to the other side, now across the blue line, they get to the red line and across to the blue line.
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The chart below, with the red line added, measures the various attacks the Taliban and associated insurgents launched against NATO forces, month by month.
Blog text (18) -
Bulldogs with the puck out of their own zone, they get to the red line and move it up to the blue line and dump it in the Stingers' zone.
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During the game, the referee emphasized that no player could cross the red line before the puck.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The components 'red' (a color associated with danger/stop) and 'line' (a boundary) combine to give a metaphorical sense of a limit that must not be crossed, so the meaning is partly inferable to learners who know both words. However, this is a conventionalized political/negotiation metaphor rather than a literal composition, so many B1 learners may not predict the specific pragmatic meaning without prior exposure.
Etymology
Red line comes from the bright red line painted across the middle of an ice hockey rink to divide the two halves. Players watch that line because some rules and passes change when the puck crosses it.
