shirtsleeves

See also: shirt-sleeves and shirt sleeves

English

Noun

shirtsleeves

1. plural of shirtsleeve

Noun

shirtsleeves pl (plural only)

1. Alternative form of shirt sleeves
   1. Street clothes, without a jacket or special protection.

      Even though there were dangerous chemicals about, they worked in their shirtsleeves rather than hazmat suits.

      • 1973 December, MA Humphreys, “Classroom Temperature, Clothing and Thermal Comfort--A Study of Secondary School Children in Summertime. Building Research Establishment Current Paper 22/74”, in The Building Services Engineer, volume 41:

        For children in shirtsleeves or summer dresses, the optimum temperature was 24.5 degrees Centigrade, and for children wearing jumpers or blazers, it was 21.5 degrees Centigrade.

      • 1993, Dana Stabenow, A Fatal Thaw, →ISBN:

        After a while hte sun grew warm enough to remove her sweatshirt and work in shirtsleeves.

      • 2007, Darrel E. Bigham, Lincoln, Race, and Slavery:

        In a cluttered study Lincoln sits in shirtsleeves and slippers, at work on the document.

      • 2017, R Aldous, Schlesinger: The Imperial Historian:

        While they were drinking prelunch martinis, a staffer entered the room nervously, the urgency of the moment signaled by the fact that he approached Graham in just his shirtsleeves.

   2. Non-professional status
      • 1998, Nancy L. Stokey, “Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves: the economics of social mobility”, in Frontiers of Research in Economic Theory, →ISBN:

        (see title)

      • 2006, Nobuhiro Kiyotaki, Alexander Michaelides, Kalin Nikolov, From Shirtsleeves to Shirtsleeves in a Long Lifetime, page 24:

        Then the retiree goes back to a real shirtsleeves again if he lives long enough.

      • 2008, Charles A. Lowenhaupt, “Freedom from wealth”, in The Journal of Wealth Management, volume 10, number 4:

        Creating freedom and functionality around wealth requires allowing the possibility of failure, the risk that the wealth might be lost and shirtsleeves are again the family vestment

      • 2016, John L. Ward, Perpetuating the family business: 50 lessons learned from long lasting, successful families in business, page 5:

        But now I was confonted with a fatalistic concept: Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves.

Derived terms

• shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations

Anagrams

• silver-sheets, silver sheets