Maybe this is a Canadian thing, but we always used the term "undershirt" to denote a t-shirt worn as the bottom layer of clothing. Some people seem to limit this term to white t-shirts meant as a form of underwear -- t-shirts you wouldn't typically, say, wear to school as your only shirt on a warm day. But my parents always referred to the bottom-layer t-shirt as an undershirt, regardless of its color or style, unless it was the only shirt I was wearing at all, in which case it was just a "t-shirt."
I hate shopping for clothes (yes, any day now I expect to receive by notice by mail that the authorities have revoked my homosexuality) so I don't do it very often, but last time I did I noticed a bunch of t-shirts sold as "dress t-shirts." This sounded like an oxymoron, so I asked, and was told they were the sort of t-shirts you could wear with a dressier jacket, like a sports coat.
To me, it looked like an excuse to charge $80 for t-shirts.
So it might be just as well there isn't a word for "a t-shirt not worn as an undershirt," since it might become a pretext for higher prices on same.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-04-12 10:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-12 06:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-13 04:51 am (UTC)To me, it looked like an excuse to charge $80 for t-shirts.
So it might be just as well there isn't a word for "a t-shirt not worn as an undershirt," since it might become a pretext for higher prices on same.