shirt-sleeve

See also: shirt sleeve and shirtsleeve

English

Etymology

The adjective sense is derived from the practice of taking one’s jacket off and relaxing in shirt sleeves.

Adjective

shirt-sleeve (not comparable)

  1. Having an informal, relaxed appearance or approach, particularly in business.
    He had a shirt-sleeve style of management.
  2. (space flight, of an environment) That allows working without the need of wearing a spacesuit.
    • 2008, Janet Ferl, Linda Hewes, Lindsay Aitchinson, Victor Koscheyev, Gloria Leon, Ed Hodgson, Frank Sneeringer, “Trade Study of an Exploration Cooling Garment”, in 38th International Conference on Environmental Systems, San Francisco, CA, USA, →DOI, →ISSN:
      The Exploration Cooling Garment shall allow a crewmember to maintain their nominal shirt-sleeve range of motion.

Noun

shirt-sleeve (plural shirt-sleeves)

  1. Alternative form of shirt sleeve.
    • 1872, William Makepeace Thackeray, The History of Samuel Titmarsh and the Great Hoggarty Diamond:
      Not one of those rustic wassals of the Ouse of Widdlers, but ad his air curled and his shirt-sleaves tied up with pink ribbing as he led to the macy dance some appy country gal, with a black velvit boddice and a redd or yaller petticoat, a hormylu cross on her neck, and a silver harrow in her air!
    • 1934, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night: A Romance, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC; republished as chapter VIII, in Malcolm Cowley, editor, Tender is the Night: A Romance [...] With the Author’s Final Revisions, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951, →OCLC, book III (Casualties: 1925), page 153:
      But Dick's necessity of behaving as he did was a projection of some submerged reality: he was compelled to walk there, or stand there, his shirt-sleeve fitting his wrist and his coat sleeve encasing his shirt-sleeve like a sleeve valve, his collar moulded plastically to his neck, his red hair cut exactly, his hand holding his small briefcase like a dandy—just as another man once found it necessary to stand in front of a church in Ferrara, in sackcloth and ashes.

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