shirtfront
shirtfront noun: the front part of a shirt.
Noun
shirtfront (plural shirtfronts)
- The front part of a shirt.
- In the Victorian Era, exposing your shirtfront in public was considered improper, as shirts were viewed as undergarments. Waistcoats concealed this and helped [to] tame oversized, billowy shirts.2025 September 12, Jack Collins, “Why Did Men Stop Wearing Three-Piece Suits?”, in Gentleman's Gazette
- A detachable insert that simulates the front of a shirt.
- I liked the man for his own sake, and even had he promised to turn out a celebrity it would have had no weight with me. I look upon notoriety with the same indifference as on the buttons on a man's shirt-front, or the crest on his note-paper.1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC
- A pitch that is easy to bat on.
- A head-on charge aimed at bumping an opponent to the ground.
- An attractive facade applied only to the front of a house.
- It is explained that a "shirt front" building is one of which only the street elevation is given a finished architectural treatment, the sides and back being of cheaper material, with no attempt at unification with the front.1927, The Bricklayer, Mason and Plasterer, volumes 30-32, page 100
- False fronts, frequently called "shirt fronts," are futile attempts to make a small, cheap house pass for something larger and more valuable.1967, The Appraisal of Real Estate, page 132
Verb
shirtfront (third-person singular simple present shirtfronts, present participle shirtfronting, simple past and past participle shirtfronted)
- To confront in a threatening manner.
- This was a case of a deputy shirtfronting her leader with an ultimatum and forcing a decision that would come close to wrecking the government's environmental credibility.2014, Philip Chubb, Power Failure
- Pravda has described Tony Abbott as “a disturbed mind crying out for therapy”: after his threat to “shirtfront” the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in Brisbane.2014 October 14, “Pravda lashes Tony Abbott as 'disturbed' over threat to shirtfront Vladimir Putin”, in The Guardian
Forms of shirtfront
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | shirtfronts |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | shirtfronts |
| present participle | shirtfronting |
| past participle | shirtfronted |
| past | shirtfronted |
Origin of shirtfront
From shirt + front.
Questions about shirtfront
- What does shirtfront mean?
- Shirtfront means the front part of a shirt.
- What part of speech is shirtfront?
- Shirtfront can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of shirtfront?
- The plural of shirtfront is shirtfronts.
Words near shirtfront in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: shirtfront (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-shirtfront.ogg.
Cite this entry: “shirtfront.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shirtfront. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.