- skirt (n.)
- c.1300, "lower part of a woman's dress," from Old Norse skyrta "shirt," see shirt. Sense development from "shirt" to "skirt" is possibly related to the long shirts of peasant garb (cf. Low German cognate Schört, in some dialects "woman's gown"). Sense of "border, edge" (in outskirts, etc.) first recorded late 15c., and the verb meaning "to pass along the edge" is from 1620s. Metonymic use for "women collectively" is from 1550s; slang sense of "young woman" is from 1906; skirt-chaser first attested 1942.