Skirt is Old Norse skyrta, and shirt is its Old English cousin scyrte. The difference is the hard sk- that Norse preserved against the sh- that English produced, and the pair is the standard demonstration of how Scandinavian borrowings show themselves in the language.
The odd part is the meaning. The Norse word meant a shirt or a kind of kirtle, not a skirt, and how English got from one to the other is unclear — the suggestion is the long shirts of peasant dress, which hung like a skirt from the waist. In early English use the two words were not always distinguishable. Skirt arrived in the early 1300s for the hanging lower part of a woman's dress, and by the late 1400s had also acquired the general sense of the edge or border of anything, which survives in outskirts.
skirt (n.) early 14c. (mid-13c. as a surname), "lower part of a woman's dress," the part that hangs from the waist, from Old Norse skyrta "shirt, a kind of kirtle;" see shirt , which is from the Old English cognate, and from which it is not always distinguishable in early use. The sense development from "shirt" to "skirt" is obscure; it could be from the long shirts of peasant garb (compare Low German cognate Schört , in some dialects "woman's gown"). Also "lower part of a man's gown, clerical vestment, etc." (late 14c.). The sense of "border, edge, part of anything furthest from the mass or the center" (in outskirt , etc.) is recorded by late 15c. Metonymic use for "women collectively" is from 1550s; the slang sense of "young woman" is from 1906; skirt-chasing "actions taken in romantic or sexual pursuit of females" is attested by 1899. also from early 14c. skirt (v.) c. 1600, "to border, form the edge of," from skirt (n.). The meaning "to pass along the edge" is from 1620s. Related: Skirted ; skirting . also from c. 1600
skirt came in through Old Norse, and its spelling follows that family's conventions.
How that family writes these sounds
| /sk/ at the start | sk-, never sc- or sh-sky, skin, skirt, skull |
What gives it away on the page
| sk- | Native sc- had already softened to sh-, so a hard sk- came from somewhere else.sky, skin, skirt, skill, skull |
Placing it without the spelling
| a hard /sk/ at the start | Old Norsesky, skin, skirt, skull |
Old Norse in the spelling guide · guess another word's family