Shirtfront

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.

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.

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.

False fronts, frequently called "shirt fronts," are futile attempts to make a small, cheap house pass for something larger and more valuable.

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.

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.