Meaning

A knee-length tunic..

Definitions by Sense

1. A knee-length tunic.
2. A short jacket.
3. A woman's gown; a woman's outer petticoat or skirt.
4. (transitive) To clothe or cover with, or as if with, a kirtle; to hitch up (a long garment) to the length of a kirtle.

Example Sentences

All in a kirtle of diſcolourd ſay / He clothed was, ypaynted full of eies; / And in his boſome ſecretly there lay / An hatefull Snake, the which his taile vptyes / In many folds, and mortall ſting implyes.

Few words have occasioned such controversy among the commentators on our old plays, as this; and all for want of knowing that it is used in a two-fold sense, sometimes for the jacket merely, and sometimes for the train or upper petticoat attached to it. A full kirtle was always a jacket and petticoat, a half kirtle (a term which frequently occurs) was either the one or the other; but our ancestors, who wrote when this article of dress was every where in use, and when there was little danger of being misunderstood, most commonly contented themselves with the simple term, (kirtle,) leaving the sense to be gathered from the context.

Many of the church dignitaries are distinguishable by peculiarities of dress, as the shovel hat and kirtle.

Her eyes were large, and full of light, / Her arms and neck were bare; / No garment she wore save a kirtle bright, / And her own long, raven hair.

KIRTLE, […] a Sort of ſhort Jacket.

A man's jacket was also called a kirtle.

Janet tied her kirtle green, / Above her knee and not below / And she's gone to Carterhaugh / just as fast as she can go

Per[igot] VVell decked in a frocke of gray, / Wil[ly] hey ho, gray is greet, / Per. And in a kirtle of green ſay, / [Wil.] the greene is for maydens meet.

Word Forms

• kirtles
• kirtling
• kirtled

Related Words

When Should You Use Kirtle?

Use kirtle when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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