to dress up in a shroudie

9.9

To wear a simple white sheet as a ghost costume at Halloween

phrasal verb

Informal

: disfrazarse de fantasma

Every Halloween, the children dress up in a shroudie and try to scare their neighbors.

Examples

When I was young, I would dress up in a shroudie and pretend to haunt the house.
She loves to dress up in a shroudie because it's the easiest costume to make.
Don't dress up in a shroudie this Halloween!
Emily dressed up in a shroudie for the party.
Every Halloween, the children dress up in a shroudie and try to scare their neighbors.
She loves to dress up in a shroudie because it's the easiest costume to make.
When I was young, I would dress up in a shroudie and pretend to haunt the house.

How Elaborate

to dress up in a shroudie

Informal

9.9

to clothe

19 3.2

Surface Forms

dress up in a shroudie infinitive

dressed up in a shroudie past

dressed up in a shroudie past participle

dressing up in a shroudie present participle

dresses up in a shroudie third person singular

Morphology

dress + up + in + a + shroudie

The core construction 'dress up in' is fully transparent (to wear a costume), but the noun 'shroudie' is nonstandard/nonce and not listed; its meaning must be inferred from the known word 'shroud' plus a playful -ie suffix. Because the verb part is predictable but the crucial noun requires morphological inference from 'shroud' (and is not a common lexical item), the overall expression is only partially transparent.

Etymology

Dress up in a shroudie may come from the old word shroud, a cloth used to wrap a dead body. Putting a white sheet over your head makes you look like a ghost, so the phrase came to mean 'to wear a ghost costume'.