TO GET ONE’S SHIRT OUT (or LOSE ONE’S SHIRT), verb. phr. (common).—To make (or get) angry. Hence, SHIRTY = angry, ill-tempered.

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  1851–61.  H. MAYHEW, London Labour and the London Poor, iii. 147. They knocked his back as they went over, and he got SHIRTEY.

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  1897.  W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM, Liza of Lambeth, iii. You ain’t SHIRTY ’cause I kissed yer?

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  COLLOQUIALISMS.—TO BET ONE’S SHIRT (or PUT ONE’S SHIRT ON) = to risk all; TO FLY ROUND AND TEAR ONE’S SHIRT = to bestir oneself; SHIRT (or FLAG) IN THE WIND = a fragment seen through the fly, or through a hole in the breech; ‘THAT’S UP YOUR SHIRT’ = ‘That’s a puzzler for you’; ‘DO AS MY SHIRT DOES’ = ‘Kiss my arse!’

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  c. 1707.  Ballad of Old Proverbs [D’URFEY, Wit and Mirth; or Pills to Purge Melancholy (1707)], ii. 112.

        But if she prove her self a Flurt,
Then she may DO AS DOES MY SHIRT.

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  See also BOILED SHIRT; BLOODY SHIRT; HISTORICAL (or ILLUSTRATED) SHIRT.

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