shirt

Shirt comes from Old English sċyrte, a short garment or skirt, from Proto-West Germanic *skurtijā, from Proto-Germanic *skurtaz meaning 'short,' itself from *skertaną 'to cut off,' tracing back to Proto-Indo-European *(s)ker- 'to cut off; to divide.'

The word began as a description of length — a 'short garment' — rather than any particular kind of clothing, and only later narrowed to mean the upper-body garment we know today.

Shirt is a doublet of skirt, which entered English separately through Old Norse; both ultimately point back to the same Germanic root for 'short.'