Climbing Lane; Madiba shirt

[Lynne Murphy]

--On Wednesday, April 28, 2004 12:40 pm -0400 Jesse Sheidlower
<jester at PANIX.COM> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 28, 2004 at 12:35:17PM -0400, Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:
>>
>> MADIBA SHIRT--from THE STAR (www.star.cp.za), 28 April
>> 2004, pg. 1, col. 2: "To signify that it was indeed a very
>> special day, Nelson Mandela dumped his Madiba shirts and
>> wore a suit and tie."  OED have Madiba?
>
> It's not a type of shirt, it's a nickname for Nelson Mandela
> himself. It's in the Dictionary of South African English
> from 1990 but OED would (and does) omit it as encyclopedic.

But 'Madiba shirt' is a type of shirt popularised by Mandela--a dress shirt
(buttons up, collar, long sleeves) in cotton (or similar) with a colourful,
dynamic print.  He wears them buttoned up to the neck.

Lynne

Dr M Lynne Murphy
Lecturer in Linguistics

Department of Linguistics and English Language
Arts B133
University of Sussex
Falmer
Brighton BN1 9QN
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