Meaning
To be prepared to give away anything you own, even the clothes you are actually wearing, in order to help someone. It is said of people of extreme generosity, and, in constructions like 'take the shirt off your back', of being exploited or fleeced of everything. Informal and warm when praising generosity, but sharply critical when describing exploitation. Regional use: General English (clothing origin).
Origin
The image is hyperbole for total self-sacrifice: a shirt was the garment closest to the skin, so surrendering even that meant giving your last possession. The anchor suggesting an American 19th-century origin does not hold up: the Online Etymology Dictionary dates 'give (someone) the shirt off one's back' to 1771, an 18th-century (British) attestation, and the expression only later became a staple of American English, where it is now especially common. Readers have long connected the sentiment to the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:40, surrendering cloak as well as coat/tunic), but that is a plausible resonance rather than a documented source, and no verified derivation traces the idiom to the Bible. History and inference should be kept apart here: the documented fact is the 1771 date; the generosity-of-last-garment image explains the sense.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- give the shirt off one's back
- he'd give you the shirt off his back
- steal the shirt off your back
- take the shirt off your back
Usage Examples
- Marta would give you the shirt off her back, so I was not surprised when she emptied her savings for her nephew's surgery.
- The rental agency practically took the shirt off my back with deposits, fees and insurance I never agreed to.
- Anyone who lends Dan money might as well hand over the shirt off their back, because they will never see it again.