Red Guard

noun

: a member of a paramilitary youth organization in China in the 1960s

Examples of Red Guard in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web Young scientist Ye Wenjie (Zine Tseng) watches as her father is beaten to death in front of a crowd by the Red Guard. Jazz Tangcay, Variety, 23 Mar. 2024 The Chinese series contains only vague references to the Revolution, and didn’t show the book’s brutish portrayals of the Red Guard. James Hibberd, The Hollywood Reporter, 1 Feb. 2024 This Red Guard–like ideological frenzy is somehow attributed to the Cold Warrior Henry Kissinger. Rich Lowry, National Review, 1 Dec. 2023 One of his three sisters, who was left behind in China, went on to join the Red Guard; his mother had died years earlier. Geoffrey Mak, The New Yorker, 14 Oct. 2023 Song rose to national fame not long after, when a photographer captured her tying a Red Guard armband around Mao’s sleeve at an immense rally in Tiananmen Square. Mary Gallagher, Foreign Affairs, 20 June 2023 In the late 1960s, the fury of vigilante Red Guard youth prompted Ms. Chen and her husband to send their young son away to live with his grandmother in Shanghai. Alexandra Stevenson, New York Times, 13 Jan. 2023 This portrayal of contemporary college students bursting at the seams with a deadly eagerness to take offense, censorious and intemperate, irreverent in the worst ways, and yearning to be a neo–Red Guard with a Tumblr account in no way reflects my own experiences as a TA or a lecturer. WIRED, 16 Nov. 2022 On the big screen, Ahn appeared as a Red Guard in Prisoner of War (1954), starring Ronald Reagan; as a printer in the drama Come the Morning (1993); as a liquor store clerk in Robert Harmon’s Eyes of an Angel (1991); and as a cook in Mel Brooks’ Life Stinks (1991). Trilby Beresford, The Hollywood Reporter, 28 Feb. 2022

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'Red Guard.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

First Known Use

1966, in the meaning defined above

Time Traveler
The first known use of Red Guard was in 1966

Dictionary Entries Near Red Guard

Cite this Entry

“Red Guard.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Red%20Guard. Accessed 29 Mar. 2024.

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