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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

kirtle.

A knee-length tunic.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈkəːt(ə)l/Received-Pronunciation/ˈkɜː(ɹ)-/Received-Pronunciation/ˈkɚt(ə)l/General-American/-ɾ(ə)l/General-American
  1. A knee-length tunic.

  2. A short jacket.

  3. A woman's gown; a woman's outer petticoat or skirt.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English kirtel, from Old English cyrtel, cognate with Old Norse kyrtill (“tunic”) (whence Icelandic kyrtill, Danish kjortel (“gown, tunic”), Swedish kjortel (“petticoat, skirt”)), from Old Norse *kurtil-, supposedly a diminutive of *kurt-, from Latin curtus (“short, shortened”). Compare German Kittel.

verb/ˈkəːt(ə)l/Received-Pronunciation/ˈkɜː(ɹ)-/Received-Pronunciation/ˈkɚt(ə)l/General-American/-ɾ(ə)l/General-American
  1. To clothe or cover with, or as if with, a kirtle; to hitch up (a long garment) to the length of a kirtle.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

From Middle English kirtel, from Old English cyrtel, cognate with Old Norse kyrtill (“tunic”) (whence Icelandic kyrtill, Danish kjortel (“gown, tunic”), Swedish kjortel (“petticoat, skirt”)), from Old Norse *kurtil-, supposedly a diminutive of *kurt-, from Latin curtus (“short, shortened”). Compare German Kittel.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.