horsehair shirt
English
[edit]Noun
[edit]horsehair shirt (plural horsehair shirts)
- Synonym of hairshirt
- 2008, Eugene N. Zeigler, When Conscience and Power Meet, →ISBN, page 147:
- I always thought of it as the horsehair shirt of politics: necessary but uncomfortable.
- 2011, Douglas Boyd, April Queen: Eleanor of Aquitaine, →ISBN:
- Becket took to wearing a horsehair shirt, constantly irritating the skin beneath the fine clothes he still affected, and followed a strict horarium with midnight prayers, rising at dawn to wash the feet of beggars and distribute food to the hungry.
- 2014, David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks, →ISBN, page 442:
- Strap on your horsehair shirt later. I'm the better transverser, and I'm just nastier.