hair shirt

noun

1

: a shirt made of rough animal hair worn next to the skin as a penance

2

: one that irritates like a hair shirt

Synonyms

• aggravation
• aggro [British]
• annoyance
• bother
• botheration
• bugbear
• exasperation
• frustration
• hassle
• headache
• inconvenience
• irk
• irritant
• nuisance
• peeve
• pest
• rub
• ruffle
• thorn
• trial
• vexation

Examples of hair shirt in a Sentence

the constant need to cut costs was a hair shirt, but one that the theater company had to live with

Recent Examples on the Web

And that gave birth to the worst Wolverine, which also gave birth to the idea that the suit is a hair shirt. —Michael Ordoña, Los Angeles Times, 25 Nov. 2024

Erin Maglaque’s review of a new book on women and sound in Renaissance Italy peels back the layers of a less-talked about form of religious asceticism and control, one where there are no hair shirts or decade-long fasts, just… silence. —Michelle Weber, Longreads, 15 Nov. 2024

And that gave birth to the worst Wolverine, which also gave birth to the idea that the suit is a hair shirt. —Michael Ordoña, Los Angeles Times, 25 Nov. 2024

Talking about wedding vows was like donning a hair shirt. —Leslie Jamison, The New Yorker, 15 Jan. 2024

The novel aesthetic of Art Nouveau wrapped modernism in the garb of pleasure, instead of in the hair shirt of social obligation and moral uplift. —Regina Cole, Forbes, 1 Jan. 2023

Few people’s utopia involves wearing a hair shirt and giving up culinary pleasures; utopia and sacrifice are, for many, antonyms. —Jan Dutkiewicz, The New Republic, 20 Oct. 2022

This is a coming-of-age story in which the transition from adolescence to adulthood is akin to swapping one hair shirt for another. —Jake Cline, Washington Post, 27 May 2022

Aiden needs neither hair shirt nor whip to self-flagellate, and Simone writes of depression with a visceral ache. —Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 11 Nov. 2021

Word History

First Known Use

14th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for hair shirt

• alert
• assert
• avert
• dessert
• divert
• evert
• exert
• inert
• insert
• invert
• nightshirt
• overt