Shirtfront
noun, verb, slang ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 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."
- 2 a man's detachable insert (usually starched) to simulate the front of a shirt wordnet
- 3 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."
- 4 the front of a shirt (usually the part not covered by a jacket) wordnet
- 5 A pitch that is easy to bat on.
Show 2 more definitions
- 6 A head-on charge aimed at bumping an opponent to the ground.
- 7 An attractive facade applied only to the front of a house. slang
"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."
- 1 To confront in a threatening manner. Australia, transitive
"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."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"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."
Etymology
From shirt + front.
More for "shirtfront"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.