"short-skirt", v. = 'to shortchange, give short shrift to'

[Barbara Need]

On 21 Feb 2009, at 7:08 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> At 2/20/2009 09:58 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>> At 9:18 PM -0500 2/20/09, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>> At 2/20/2009 03:30 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>>>>
>>>> FWIW, my WAG is "short-shrift." v.
>>>
>>> And a "shift" was a kind of skirt (a sense not in much use today,
>>> I guess).
>>>
>> And way back when, shirt = skirt, only for the Anglo-Saxons and Danes
>> respectively; it's only natural that *they* should get conflated.
>
> Not to mention gender-confused.  Did they mix it up with one another
> when they met?

As I understand it, the OE word _scyrte_ referred to a garment that
extended from the shoulders to the knees--though I cannot at this time
confirm that.

Barbara

Barbara Need
Chicago

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org