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wifebeater

noun

Etymology

From wife + beater. The sleeveless shirt acquired the nickname by association with men who commit domestic violence. The lager, being relatively strong, was thought to lead to drunken disputes.

  1. inherited from bēatere — “a beater; boxer, fighter; champion”
  2. inherited from beter
  3. compounded as wifebeater — “wife + beater”

Definitions

  1. One who (usually as a repeated practice) beats his wife, or a husband prone to violence.

  2. A type of sleeveless shirt, often but not exclusively worn as an undershirt.

    • [A]s I walked down the bustling street toward campus with my friends, he came out of nowhere and gave me a pick-up line only a wifebeater guy could muster.
    • Just then, a tall, lanky white man wearing a sleeveless tee or "wifebeater" as it is often referred to walked around the corner.

  3. Stella Artois, a brand of lager beer.

    • And then we were walking back alleys, trudging through the drifts of chip papers, the bottles and empty cans of wifebeater[…]

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for wifebeater. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA