Petticote

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A light, frilled undergarment worn under a skirt or dress to add fullness ; a mocking way of referring to women as a group
2. An under-skirt of linen or lace, worn beneath outer clothing for warmth or shape ; a derisive collective term for women
3. A stiffened or frilled skirt worn as underwear by women in earlier centuries ; a dismissive phrase used to refer to women in general

Etymology: "Petticoat" began as a plain compound, not a fancy coinage. In Middle English "petty coat" meant a small or little coat, the word "petty" coming from Old French "petit" meaning small, and "coat" being a garment of any kind. Its earliest sense in English was a sleeveless jacket or tunic, the kind of garment that could be worn beneath a larger one, and "petticoat" was used for the same sort of garment worn as an outer item for both men and women. The word narrowed over the centuries. By the 1600s it had come to mean a skirt worn under a gown or dress, and the sense of an outer garment faded out. The shift from "coat" to "skirt" is the centrepiece here: a word for a small coat ended up naming a layer of women's clothing that no one would ever mistake for a jacket. The word's use as a noun for an underskirt is the sense the word has kept, and it is the one a reader meets in older novels and in descriptions of Victorian dress.