Other forms: sleeves
A sleeve is the part of a garment that covers the arm. Short sleeves, roll up your sleeves, a sleeve came off.
It also names any tube that fits over something else: a record sleeve, a cardboard sleeve on a coffee cup, a sleeve on a pipe. Two idioms are very common and worth having: roll up your sleeves means to get ready for hard work, and have something up your sleeve means to have a hidden advantage, from card cheats. And wear your heart on your sleeve means to show your feelings openly.
1nounsleeveThe part of a garment covering the arm.
“The sleeves are too long by about two inches.”
2nountubeA tube or cover fitting over something.
“The record was fine and the sleeve was ruined.”
sleeve is a covering for the arm.
Old English sliefe comes from a root meaning to slip — the same root as slip and slippery. A sleeve is the part you slip your arm into, named for the action rather than the shape.
Old English
slīef
Middle English
sleve
English, today
sleeve
Built from
From Middle English sleve, slefe, from Old English slīef and slīefe (“sleeve”). Cognate with stq Sleeuwe (“sleeve”), West Frisian slúf, Dutch sloof (“apron”), Low German sluve, dialectal German Schlaube. The Canadian sense of “measure smaller than a pint” is due to a former conflict between federal law and provincial law in British Columbia. According to federal law, a pint must be 20 imperial ounces (~568 ml), but according to provincial law at the time, the maximum individual serving size was 500 ml, so an individual portion could not be called a “pint” in British Columbia, and required a different term. The provincial law has been changed, allowing servings of up to 24 oz (~682 ml), but the term remains in use. The term sleeve itself for a cylindrical glass of beer is also found in the UK and Australia (as sleever), and may be due to stacked glasses resembling a sleeve.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA