evening shirt
- noun
- /ˈiːv.nɪŋ ʃɜrt/
:
camisa de gala
- The tailor recommended a classic evening shirt to complete his black tie ensemble.
- cotton evening shirt
Examples
-
He wore a crisp evening shirt under his tuxedo for the formal gala.
-
For the wedding, he carefully pressed his best evening shirt to ensure it looked sharp.
-
A huge dark stain covered the whole back of what, by the hint of its muddy sleeves, must have been a white evening shirt.
Fiction book (1990)
Synonyms
9
2.7
A formal men's shirt with a stiff front, worn with a tuxedo
How Formal
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is compositionally derivable from 'evening' (the time/occasion) + 'shirt' (a garment): a shirt intended for evening or formal occasions. Although the full technical description (stiff, starched front, tuxedo pairing) is more specific, a B1 learner who knows both words will infer the basic idea of a shirt for evening/formal wear.
Etymology
The noun evening shirt comes from the simple image of a white shirt worn for the evening, when men went to formal dinners and events. These shirts had a stiff, starched front to look very neat under the lights, so evening shirt now means a man's formal white shirt worn with 'evening' dress.