kirtle
Americannoun
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a woman's loose gown, worn in the Middle Ages.
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Obsolete. a man's tunic.
noun
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a woman's skirt or dress
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a man's coat
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of kirtle
before 900; Middle English kirtel, Old English cyrtel, apparently equivalent to cyrt ( an ) to shorten (≪ Latin curtus shortened) + -el -le
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Clad in a cloud-gray kirtle and a hood as blue as the sky.
From "Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes" by Edith Hamilton
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Dressed in a brown, grease-spotted kirtle, she had a lopsided white linen cap upon her dark and gray-streaked tresses.
From "Crispin: The Cross of Lead" by Avi
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"How much did your mother tell you to take for the goat?" asked the woman in the scarlet kirtle.
From "Stardust" by Neil Gaiman
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The lady in the scarlet kirtle stood up then and placed the bowl which had contained her portion of hare into the fire.
From "Stardust" by Neil Gaiman
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"I was going to be eating with fingers on a plate of fresh leaves," she said, handing a bowl to the lady in the scarlet kirtle.
From "Stardust" by Neil Gaiman
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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.