apron skirt

apron skirt

English

Alternative forms

• apronskirt

Noun

apron skirt (plural apron skirts)

1. The lower, skirt-like part of an apron of the type that covers the front of both the torso and the thighs.
   • 1979, Cormac McCarthy, Suttree, New York: Vintage, 1992, Chapter 4, p. 70,

     He adjusted salads with his thumb and wiped away drips of gravy with his apronskirt.

   • 2002, Ellen Bryant Voigt, “The Art of Distance” in Messenger: New and Selected Poems, 1976―2006, New York and London: Norton, 2007, p. 186,

     When she said grace,

     my grandmother said it standing,

     bandaging her hand in her apron skirt

     to lift the cast-iron skillet out of its round hole

2. A skirt with an apron-like panel incorporated into the front.
3. (historical) An item of clothing worn by women in some North American indigenous communities, consisting of an apron-like flap hanging over the front of the thighs, sometimes with an additional flap hanging in the back.
   • 1984, Paul Hulton, America 1585: The Complete Drawings of John White, The University of North Carolina Press and British Museum Publications, description of Plate 33, p. 178,
   • The woman, described […] as a chief’s wife or chief lady of Pomeiooc, wears an apron-skirt of fringed skin, edged at the top and bottom with a single row of white beads.
4. (historical) A long skirt with a slit up the back as far as the buttocks, designed for women to wear over their breeches while riding a horse.
   • 1903, Alice M. Hayes and Matthew Horace Hayes, The Horsewoman: A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, London: Hurst and Blackett, p. 96,

     The apron skirt is an extremely cold, comfortless garment for winter wear, because it is merely a left-side covering for the limbs, while the right side being entirely unclothed, the lines and rotundity of the figure are, when the wearer rises in trotting, displayed to the wondering gaze of those who ride behind her.