shirt

Pluralshirts

Formsshirts, shirting, shirted

1. 1
   top (clothing)nouncountable

   An item of clothing worn on the upper body, often having long or short sleeves that cover the arms.

   He ironed his shirt before the interview.

   The hikers packed extra shirts for the long trip.

   Note

   Older writing treats the shirt as the layer next to the skin. John Fisher in 1509 writes of "shertes & gyrdyls of heere," shirts of hair, and Addison in 1705 notes people with nothing over their shoulders but their shirts in December.

2. 2
   clothed teamnouncountable

   A member of the team that wears shirts in an informal game where one side keeps its shirts on and the other plays bare-chested.

   When we split up for basketball at the park, Dan pointed at me and said I was a shirt and everyone on his side would play as skins.

   The shirts pressed forward while the skins fell back on defense.

   UsageMost often plural, naming a whole side: shirts and skins, the shirts against the skins.

   Oppositeskin

   Note

   Pickup games settle the uniform question with what players already have on: one side keeps its shirts, the other strips to skins. The word is most often plural and names a whole side, as in shirts and skins or the shirts against the skins, extending the garment to the player who keeps it on.

3. 3
   clotheverbraretransitive

   To clothe or cover someone with a shirt, or to wrap something as if in a shirt.

   Similarclothe, dress, wrap, cover

   Note

   A verb made from the noun back in Middle English, where it was spelled sherten or shirten. The figurative "as if" use shows best in the past participle with a with-phrase naming the covering. John Dryden's King Arthur (1691) pictures souls "naked now, or shirted just with air."

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