Hair Shirt

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Hair Shirt

An informal term for an austerity measure. The term derives from shirts made of animal hair that religious figures have worn as a sign of penance. Austerity measures are adopted to make up for (or even to do penance for) excessive government debt.

References in periodicals archive ?

HAIR SHIRTS, HAIRY LEGS: Sister Ruth and Sister Maria show off their knees and entertain shoppers in Coventry as part of the summer celebration events.

Nuns are naughty but nice

People expect us to wear sandals and hair shirts and turn up sporting dreadlocks

Real life: Can you tell what you do from what you wear?; One's a top manager, one's a secretary, one's a green warrior and one's an engineer. But from their work clothes here, which is which? Image consultant Tessa Carmen tries to guess . .

Penitents were required to crop their hair, wear hair shirts (goat hair, not their own), practice celibacy, and prostrate themselves before the bishop, who would literally walk over their backs on his way into the church for Mass.

How the church has learned to say, "I'm sorry"--

It's a boys' schoolyard brawl, pitting the Hair Shirts against the Foreskins.

It's good for the gays

So we donned our hair shirts and, as the trees rustled mysteriously in the night air, feasted, richly, on our reward.