shirring (shering)

[Verbal n. of shirr, r.] 1. Decorative needlework done by gathering the stuff in very small gathers, and holding it at more than one point, either by stitching, or by cords which pa through it and gather it more or le closely at pleasure. - 2. Manufactured webbing, and the like, in which an elastic cord or thread gives the effect described above. Also called elastic. shirring-string (sher'ing-string), n. A string or cord pa ed between the two thickne es of a double shirred fabric, so as to make the small gathers closer or looser at pleasure. Several such cords are put in side by side. shirt (shert), n. [ worn only by men and a similar garment worn by infants. It has many forms. In western Europe and the United States, the shirt ordinarily worn by men is of cotton, with linen bosom, wristbands, and collar prepared for stiffening with starch, the collar and wristbands being usually separate and adjustable. Flannel and knitted worsted shirts or under-shirts are also worn. The Emperour a-non IMG:content-0892.png:[blocks in formation] arms, Gibbon , Decline and Fall (ed. Smith, 1855), VI. 277. He [M. Leon Foucher, reviewing Guizot's translation of Sparks's Washington] adds: "It is by spreading out the miseries of the workmen, the bloody shirt of some victim, the humiliation of all, that the people are excited to take He then proceeds to state, apparently as a corollary of what may be called his bloody - shirt principle, that our Revolution was not popular with what he terms the inferior cla es, But most a uredly the Americans did not want a visible signal to push them on; and he who should have displayed a bloody shirt for that purpose would have been followed by the contempt of the spectators, and saluted with stones by every idle boy in the streets. L. Ca , France, its King, etc., p. 44. Hair shirt. See hairl. shirt (shèrt), v. t. [ Ah, for so many souls, as but this morn Were clothed with flesh, and warmed with vital blood, But naked now, or shirted but with air! Dryden, King Arthur, ii. 1.