Word.ws English Dictionary

lose one's shirt

lose one's shirt verb: to lose all of one's money; to go broke; to undergo financial ruin or disaster.

Verb

lose one's shirt (third-person singular simple present loses one's shirt, present participle losing one's shirt, simple past and past participle lost one's shirt)

  1. (idiomatic) To lose all of one's money; to go broke; to undergo financial ruin or disaster.
    • Since nearly losing his shirt in a business deal a few years back, he investigates new opportunities more cautiously.
    • Generosity indeed, but how difficult will it be for some penitent punters to drop a coin in the "sin box" if they happen to have already lost their shirt on a bet placed with Paddy Power?2010 April 27, “Church bets on power of sponsorship”, in The Guardian

Forms of lose one's shirt

third-person singular presentloses one's shirt
present participlelosing one's shirt
past participlelost one's shirt
pastlost one's shirt

Questions about lose one's shirt

What does lose one's shirt mean?
Lose one's shirt means to lose all of one's money; to go broke; to undergo financial ruin or disaster.
What part of speech is lose one's shirt?
Lose one's shirt is a verb.
What is the past tense of lose one's shirt?
The past tense of lose one's shirt is lost one's shirt.

Words near lose one's shirt in the dictionary

  1. lose one's lunch
  2. lose one's marbles
  3. lose one's mind
  4. lose one's nerve
  5. lose one's rag
  6. lose one's shirt
  7. lose one's shit
  8. lose one's temper
  9. lose one's tongue
  10. lose one's touch
  11. lose one's virginity

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lose one's shirt (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-lose one's shirt.ogg.

Cite this entry: “lose one's shirt.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lose_one%27s_shirt. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.