Word.ws English Dictionary

shirtwaist

shirtwaist noun: a woman's tailored blouse, buttoned down the front.

Noun

shirtwaist (plural shirtwaists)

  1. (US) A woman's tailored blouse, buttoned down the front.
    • The straw seats of the car hovered on the edge of combustion; the woman next to me perspired delicately for a while into her white shirtwaist […].1926, F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Penguin, published 2000, page 109
    Synonyms:
    shirtwaister

Synonyms of shirtwaist

Forms of shirtwaist

pluralshirtwaists
alternative formshirt-waist
alternative formshirt waist

Origin of shirtwaist

From shirt + waist.

Words formed from shirtwaist

Phrases with shirtwaist

Questions about shirtwaist

What does shirtwaist mean?
Shirtwaist means a woman's tailored blouse, buttoned down the front.
What part of speech is shirtwaist?
Shirtwaist is a noun.
What is the plural of shirtwaist?
The plural of shirtwaist is shirtwaists.

Words near shirtwaist in the dictionary

  1. shirtsleeved
  2. shirtsleeves
  3. shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations
  4. shirttail
  5. shirttails
  6. shirtwaist
  7. shirtwaist blouse
  8. shirtwaist blouses
  9. shirtwaisted
  10. shirtwaister
  11. shirtwaisters

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shirtwaist (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-shirtwaist.wav.

Cite this entry: “shirtwaist.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shirtwaist. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.