shirtfront

See also: shirt-front

English

Etymology

shirt +‎ front

Pronunciation

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

Noun

shirtfront (plural shirtfronts)

1. The front part of a shirt.
2. A detachable insert that simulates the front of a shirt.
   • 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter I, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:

     I liked the man for his own sake, and even had he promised to turn out a celebrity it would have had no weight with me. I look upon notoriety with the same indifference as on the buttons on a man's shirt-front, or the crest on his note-paper.

3. (cricket) A pitch that is easy to bat on.
4. (Australian rules football) A head-on charge aimed at bumping an opponent to the ground.
5. (real estate, slang) An attractive facade applied only to the front of a house.
   • 1927, The Bricklayer, Mason and Plasterer, volumes 30-32, page 100:

     It is explained that a "shirt front" building is one of which only the street elevation is given a finished architectural treatment, the sides and back being of cheaper material, with no attempt at unification with the front.

   • 1967, The Appraisal of Real Estate, page 132:

     False fronts, frequently called "shirt fronts," are futile attempts to make a small, cheap house pass for something larger and more valuable.

Translations

the front part of a shirt

• Bulgarian: нагръдник m (nagrǎdnik)
• Galician: cós m
• Norman: fale dé c'mînse f (Jersey)
• Romanian: pieptar (ro) n
• Spanish: peto (es) m

Verb

shirtfront (third-person singular simple present shirtfronts, present participle shirtfronting, simple past and past participle shirtfronted)

1. (transitive, Australia, politics) To confront in a threatening manner.
   • 2014, Philip Chubb, Power Failure:

     This was a case of a deputy shirtfronting her leader with an ultimatum and forcing a decision that would come close to wrecking the government's environmental credibility.

   • 2014 October 14, “Pravda lashes Tony Abbott as 'disturbed' over threat to shirtfront Vladimir Putin”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     Pravda has described Tony Abbott as “a disturbed mind crying out for therapy”: after his threat to “shirtfront” the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in Brisbane.