Shirt — From Old English to English | etymologist.ai
shirt
/ʃɜːrt/·noun·c. 700 CE, attested in Old English as 'scyrte' in the Épinal Glossary and related 8th-century glossaries·Established
Origin
Shirt descends from PIE *sker- (to cut) through Proto-Germanic *skurtijǭ and Old English scyrte, making it a doublet of skirt — the same Proto-Germanic word re-borrowed from Old Norse — while also connecting it to short, shear, and score, all variations on the same ancient root meaning to cut.
Definition
A garment for the upper body, typically with a collar and sleeves, derived from a Germanic root meaning 'cut (short) garment', ultimately from PIE *sker- (to cut).
The Full Story
Old Englishc. 700–1100 CEwell-attested
Old English 'scyrte' (also 'scirte') denoted a short garment worn next to the body, typically a knee-length tunic covering the upper body and thighs. The word derives from Proto-Germanic *skurtijō, itself from the root *skurtaz meaning 'short' or 'cut short', which traces back to the Proto-Indo-European root *sker- (also reconstructed as *(s)ker-), meaning 'to cut'. This PIE root is extraordinarily productive: it underlies Latin 'curtus' (short, mutilated), 'cortex' (bark, cut layer), 'scortum' (hide, skin — something cut off), Greek 'keirein' (to shear),
Did you know?
Shirt and skirt arethesame word. Proto-Germanic *skurtijǭ entered Old English as scyrte (shirt) and Old Norse as skyrta — then Viking settlers brought their version to England during the 9th and 10th centuries. Medieval English kept both, and rather than drop one, the language split their meanings
Norse 'skyrta' (shirt, skirt), Middle Dutch 'scorte' (apron), and ultimately modern English 'short', 'skirt', 'score', 'shard', 'shear', 'curt', and 'carpet' (via a
; the Épinal Glossary (c. 700 CE) provides some of the earliest evidence. The word is cognate with Old Norse 'skyrta', which gave English 'skirt' via Scandinavian influence after the Viking settlements (9th–11th centuries) — a rare case where two related forms entered English from different stages of the same root and diverged in meaning, 'shirt' becoming the upper garment and 'skirt' the lower. Middle English 'sherte' or 'shirte' (c. 1100–1400) shows the characteristic vowel shift. Scholarly treatment in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and Pokorny's Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (1959) confirms the PIE *sker- lineage. Key roots: *(s)ker- (Proto-Indo-European: "to cut, to shear"), *skurtaz (Proto-Germanic: "short, cut short"), *skurtijō (Proto-Germanic: "short cut garment").