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and loose part of a coat, dress, or other like garment; the part below the waist; as, the skirt of a coat, a dress, or a mantle.

A skirting board. [R.]

The front skirt of a garment, in distinction from the train. Honor's train Is longer than his foreskirt. Shak.

A woman's skirt so scant at the bottom as to restrain freedom of movement after the fashion of a hobble. -- Hob"ble-skirt`ed, a.

A part remote from the center; outer edge; border; -- usually in the plural; as, the outskirts of a town. Wordsworth. The outskirts of his march of mystery. Keble.

An upper skirt, shorter than the dress, and usually draped.

A petticoat; the foundation skirt of a draped dress.

A protecting ruffle or frill, as of silk or lace, sewed close to the lower edge of a skirt on the inside.

A kind of skirt ( often of velvet or brocade, but sometimes of mailed armor) which hung from the middle to about the knees, or lower. [Obs.]

A part of a lady's dress, resembling a jacket with a short skirt; -- probably so called because this fashion of dress came from the Basques.

Splendor; brightness. [Poetic] Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear. Milton.

ind of pad or cushion worn on the back below the waist, by women, to give fullness to the skirts; -- called also bishop, and tournure.

account of the cheese form assumed by a woman's dress when she stoops after extending the skirts by a rapid gyration. De Quincey. Thackeray. Cheese cake, a cake made of or filled with, a composition of soft curds, sugar, and butter. Prior. -- Cheese fly (Zoöl.), a black dipterous insect (Piophila casei) of which the l…

A kind of stiff cloth, used chiefly by women, for underskirts, to expand the gown worn over it; -- so called because originally made of hair.

part cut off or away; having the corners rounded or cut away. Cutaway coat, a coat whose skirts are cut away in front so as not to meet at the bottom.

A coat with skirts behind only, as distinct from the frock coat, of which the skirts surround the body. It is worn on occasions of ceremony. The dress coat of officers of the United States army is a full-skirted frock coat.

A hoop skirt or hoop petticoat, or other light, elastic material, used to extend the petticoat. We'll revel it as bravely as the best, . . . With ruffs and cuffs, and farthingales and things. Shak.

A fairy; an elf. "Yellow-skirted fays." Milton.

An ornamental appendage to the skirt of a woman's dress, consisting of a strip gathered and sewed on by its upper edge around the skirt, and left hanging.

To ornament with raised work; to variegate; to diversify. Whose skirt with gold was fretted all about. Spenser. Yon gray lines, That fret the clouds, are messengers of day. Shak.