1882 S. F. A. Caulfeild & B. C. Saward Dict. Needlework 451/1 Skirt braids..are made of Alpaca and Mohair.

1875 E. H. Knight Amer. Mech. Dict. III. 2196/1 Skirt-clasps. Skirt-elevators.

1932 C. L. Morgan Fountain ii. ii. 100 A woman's bicycle with the broken strings of its skirt-guard dangling in a melancholy fringe over its spokes.

1982 J. Hone Valley of Fox vii. 105 A big, black old-fashioned woman's bicycle, with cord skirt-guards forming a fan over the back wheel.

1920 T. Eaton & Co. Catal. Spring–Summer 1/1 Skirt Lengths 35 ins. 37 ins. 38 ins.

1980 L. Lewis Private Life of Country House xii. 166 Skirt lengths remained what you had been wearing for some time.

1862 W. C. Bryant Tale of Cloudland in Poet. Wks. (1883) II. 315 I plainly saw a chariot cushioned deep With sides that seemed of down, and skirt-like wings On which they nestled.

1980 Motor 16 Feb. 31/1 Deep, ‘skirt-like’ door sills.

1882 S. F. A. Caulfeild & B. C. Saward Dict. Needlework 451/2 As a rule, alpaca and silecia are the principal materials in use for Skirt Linings.

1839 C. Dickens Nicholas Nickleby xxi. 197 The knife—..an inconvenient and dangerous article for a skirt pocket.

1690 W. Leybourn Cursus mathematicus f. 901 Other Works about a Building..: As, Contaliver Cornice,..Skirt board,..&c.

1861 I. M. Beeton Bk. Househ. Managem. xli. 1013 The skirts of muslin dresses should be ironed on a skirt-board covered with flannel.

1932 D. C. Minter Mod. Needlecraft 107/2 Almost indispensable to successful dress~making are..sleeve and skirt board for pressing, [etc.].

1851 M. Reid Scalp Hunters I. xxi. 277 A row of entire skins of that animal [sc. the ermine] hung from the skirt border.

1943 J. B. Priestley Daylight on Sat. xi. 70 Don't be a dam' fool, Percy. I'm not skirt-chasing.

1981 D. Boggis Time to Betray vii. 40 Chevalier went skirt-chasing at a disco.

1942 L. V. Berrey & M. Van den Bark Amer. Thes. Slang §438/2 Lascivious man... Skirt or woman chaser.

1962 ‘L. Peters’ Snatch of Music iii. 45 He had always despised..the indiscriminate skirt-chaser.

1974 L. Lamb Man in Mist xvi. 106 I don't suppose that Settle is a skirt chaser. He probably wanted to frighten the girl away.

1950 ‘S. Ransome’ Deadly Miss Ashley xiv. 167 I always told you you'd regret your skirt-chasing... A man should stick with his wife and family.

1894 Cornhill Mag. Feb. 206 The girls who could not skirt-dance yawned behind their fans.

1895 G. B. Shaw Let. 1 Nov. in E. Terry & G. B. Shaw Corr. (1931) 17 Mrs Pat Campbell entrances all London as Juliet, with a skirt dance.

1961 P. G. Wodehouse Ice in Bedroom vi. 47 I feel like dancing a skirt dance.

1974 D. Smith Look back with Love xii. 113 There was usually one skirt-dance, during which the boys lolled..looking tolerant and slightly cynical.

1895 G. B. Shaw in Sat. Rev. 6 Apr. 445/1 Our skirt dancers are all petticoats.

1922 J. Joyce Ulysses ii. 349 Skirtdancers and highkickers.

1892 Pall Mall Gaz. 24 Mar. 1/2 It should be the very thing for skirt-dancing.

1922 J. Joyce Ulysses iii. xviii. [Penelope] 723 He was throwing his sheeps eyes at those two doing skirt duty up and down.

1925 in Amer. Speech 1972 (1975) 47 102 That evening, Jim detailed himself to some more ‘skirt duty’.

a1652 A. Wilson Inconstant Lady iv. ii I do not like that skirtfoist. Leave your bouncing!

1908 in C. W. Cunnington Eng. Women's Clothing in Present Cent. (1952) ii. 84 The skirt-knickers which the up-to-date maiden delights in.

1913 Queen 13 Dec. 1091/2 The tango and peg-top fashion between them are responsible for an entirely new form of skirt-knicker... The characteristic of the new garment..is that it is formed entirely of one length of material falling from the waist in front to the knees and up again to the waist at the back, slits or openings occurring at the sides through which the legs are passed.

1946 J. W. Day Harvest Adventure x. 145 Those cows are fed for more than nine months of the year on by-products of the farm—such as beet-tops, beet-pulp, kale—and on skirt-land, and marsh grazings.

1981 P. Salway Roman Brit. 268 The skirtlands of the southern Fens were the worst hit by these troubles.

1941 Amer. Speech 16 168/2 Skirt patrol, search for feminine companionship.

1967 Everybody's Mag. (Austral.) 18 Jan. 36/2 Today, in Vietnam, Australians are again catching up on American Army slang... All would refer to a special girlfriend as their OAO—one and only. Probably, the OAO was met on skirt patrol.

1960 Times 5 July (Suppl. on Agric.) p. vi/3 Lying between the areas of silt and peat there are indeterminate areas of what are now called ‘skirt’ soils. The soil physicist has classified them as organic silty clay loams.

1968 Economist 27 Apr. 52/2 Only two-thirds of the original acreage of peat in the fens—over 300,000 acres—are now covered with more than a ‘skirt soil’.