Meaning of “Keep Your Shirt On” Origin of Phrase with examples.

Keep Your Shirt On

Meaning

Calm down, be patient.

Example

Just keep your shirt on, dinner is almost ready.

Origin

Before modern manufacturing techniques, shirts, and all clothes for that matter, required a lot of labor to make. They were more expensive than they are today. Someone thinking of starting a fight might take off his shirt to prevent damage. Telling someone to keep his shirt on was equivalent to telling him I don’t want to fight.

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