shirt sleeve

• shirtsleeve, shirt-sleeve

shirt sleeve (plural shirt sleeves)

1. The part of a shirt that covers an arm.
   • 1934, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night: A Romance, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC; republished as chapter VIII, in Malcolm Cowley, editor, Tender is the Night: A Romance With the Author’s Final Revisions, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951, →OCLC, book III (Casualties: 1925), page 153:

     But Dick's necessity of behaving as he did was a projection of some submerged reality: he was compelled to walk there, or stand there, his shirt-sleeve fitting his wrist and his coat sleeve encasing his shirt-sleeve like a sleeve valve, his collar moulded plastically to his neck, his red hair cut exactly, his hand holding his small briefcase like a dandy—just as another man once found it necessary to stand in front of a church in Ferrara, in sackcloth and ashes.

   • 1998, David Page Coffin, Shirtmaking: Developing Skills for Fine Sewing, →ISBN, page 51:

     By far the most important fitting issue for sleeves, whether for a woman's shirt or a man's, is length, and that's probably the only part of the shirt sleeve that's bothered you if it wasn't right.

   • 2006, J. B. Bobo, Modern Coin Magic, →ISBN, page 99:

     There are certain types of sleeving that are difficult to perform with the shirt sleeves down, and it is difficult and risky to attempt sleeving while wearing a shirt with "French" cuffs.

   • 2012, Cecil Johnson, It Just Isn’t Cricket, →ISBN, page 33:

     He used to bowl slow left arm, round the wicket, and he always had his shirt sleeves loose – flapping all over the place.

• silver sheet, silver-sheet, theirselves