shirtfront
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See also: shirt-front
English
[edit]Etymology
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]Audio (General Australian): (file)
Noun
[edit]shirtfront (plural shirtfronts)
- The front part of a shirt.
- A detachable insert that simulates the front of a shirt.
- 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:
- 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.
- (cricket) A pitch that is easy to bat on.
- (Australian rules football) A head-on charge aimed at bumping an opponent to the ground.
- (real estate, slang) An attractive facade applied only to the front of a house.
- 1927, The Bricklayer, Mason and Plasterer, volumes 30-32, page 100:
- 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.
- 1967, The Appraisal of Real Estate, page 132:
- False fronts, frequently called "shirt fronts," are futile attempts to make a small, cheap house pass for something larger and more valuable.
Translations
[edit]the front part of a shirt
Verb
[edit]shirtfront (third-person singular simple present shirtfronts, present participle shirtfronting, simple past and past participle shirtfronted)
- (transitive, Australia, politics) To confront in a threatening manner.
- 2014, Philip Chubb, Power Failure:
- 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.
- 2014 October 14, “Pravda lashes Tony Abbott as 'disturbed' over threat to shirtfront Vladimir Putin”, in The Guardian[1]:
- 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.