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What is "hair-shirt"

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
hair-shirt

garment of ascetics and penitents, 1680s, from hair + shirt. Figurative use by 1884. Earlier, such a garment was called simply a hair.

WordNet
hair-shirt

adj. self-sacrificing or austere [syn: hair-shirted]

Usage examples of "hair-shirt".

Carmelite or Trappist sister, who macerates herself by the hair-shirt or the cilex, would look upon God as a false or wicked Being, if, after such cruel torment, He did not promptly open to her the gates of Paradise.