etymology - Meaning and origin of "Get someone's shirt out"


I was wondering to myself about the word "shirty". It seemed so curious a word. After all, what did its meaning have to do with shirts. "Were the two words even related?", I wondered.


So I looked up "shirty" in the dictionary...



shirty (ˈʃɜːtɪ) — adj , shirtier , shirtiest slang chiefly ( Brit ) bad-tempered or annoyed [C19: perhaps based on such phrases as to get someone's shirt out to annoy someone]



This led me to another question. I have never heard the phrase "get someone's shirt out". So I looked up this, to find out a bit more about the phrase.


And what I found was that the only places it seems to be used were in dictionary definitions of the word "shirty"!


It seems that the phrase means "to annoy someone". But where did this phrase come from and why does it mean that?



Answer



The idiom seems to be the opposite of keep one's shirt on. After a bit of Googling, I found the following reason which makes perfect sense to me:



So what does all this shirt business have to do with being annoyed? A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English by Eric Partridge suggests that it comes from the custom of taking off one’s shirt before fighting. I wouldn't argue with that.



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