shirtsleeves

nounB2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechleans spoken

Shirtsleeves are what you are left in once the jacket comes off. Collar, cuffs, no layer over the top.

The word is almost always plural and almost always inside the phrase in shirtsleeves, which describes a state rather than a garment: a man in shirtsleeves has settled in, or got hot, or got down to work. That last sense gave English shirtsleeve order and the idea of rolling your sleeves up, both of which mean serious effort is about to start. It also quietly marks the temperature, since shirtsleeve weather is warm enough to go without a coat.

Definitions of shirtsleeves

1nounshirtsleevesThe sleeves of a shirt, used to describe someone wearing no jacket over it.B2
“He was in shirtsleeves despite the cold.”

Phrases it lives in

in shirtsleeves — wearing a shirt with no jacket or coat over it

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 21 of A Man Called Ove.

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