hairshirt

Definition

A shirt made of haircloth; especially one worn by ascetics or the penitent.

Etymology

From hair + shirt.

Example Sentences

• "He is practically a total abstainer and I can affirm that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most Spartan food, cold dried grocer’s peas. He wears a hairshirt winter and summer and scourges himself every Saturday."
• "And when he went on to say, “The curse must be within ourselves,” Muir bequeathed us a hairshirt: the guilty conscience that plagues so many of us when we see what we are doing to the rest of nature."