seam of a shirt
- noun
Examples
-
Rising from the chair, she stretched, and her tired muscles pulled lazily against the seams of her shirt.
Fiction book (1992) -
The seam of his shirt had been mended neatly, I saw, if without artistry.
Fiction book (1991) -
The seam of a shirt came undone after he washed it, so he needed to sew it back together.
-
She carefully inspected the seam of her shirt to make sure there were no loose threads.
-
When trying on the new shirt, he noticed that the seam of the sleeve was slightly frayed.
Synonyms
A line where two pieces of cloth or metal are joined
How Visible
Surface Forms
Morphology
The noun phrase is fully compositional: 'seam' denotes a stitched/pressed line joining materials and 'of a shirt' simply specifies its location on a shirt, so the overall meaning is directly derivable from the parts. This literal, cross-linguistically common combination follows standard English noun + of-construction patterns, so a B1 learner who knows the constituent words will readily understand it.
Etymology
Seam of a shirt comes from the simple image of a seam: a stitched line where two pieces of cloth are 'joined' by thread. Imagine a thin line that holds the sleeve to the body of the shirt, and you see why seam of a shirt means that stitched line which can come undone.