shirt sleeve

plural shirt sleeves · alternative shirtsleeve · alternative shirt-sleeve

1. The part of a shirt that covers an arm.

   He used to bowl slow left arm, round the wicket, and he always had his shirt sleeves loose – flapping all over the place.

   2012, Cecil Johnson, It Just Isn’t Cricket, →ISBN, page 33

   3 more examples

   But Dick's necessity of behaving as he did was a projection of some submerged reality: he was compelled to walk there, or stand there, his shirt-sleeve fitting his wrist and his coat sleeve encasing his shirt-sleeve like a sleeve valve, his collar moulded plastically to his neck, his red hair cut exactly, his hand holding his small briefcase like a dandy—just as another man once found it necessary to stand in front of a church in Ferrara, in sackcloth and ashes.

   1934, F[rancis] Scott Fitzgerald, chapter VIII, in Malcolm Cowley, editor, Tender is the Night […], New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 1951, →OCLC, book III (Casualties: 1925), page 153

   By far the most important fitting issue for sleeves, whether for a woman's shirt or a man's, is length, and that's probably the only part of the shirt sleeve that's bothered you if it wasn't right.

   1998, David Page Coffin, Shirtmaking: Developing Skills for Fine Sewing, →ISBN, page 51

   There are certain types of sleeving that are difficult to perform with the shirt sleeves down, and it is difficult and risky to attempt sleeving while wearing a shirt with "French" cuffs.

   2006, J. B. Bobo, Modern Coin Magic, →ISBN, page 99