blackshirt, black shirt
[tr. It. camicia nera.]
A black shirt as the distinctive mark of the uniform of the Fascist party of Italy; hence transf. and gen. = Fascist. So black-shirted a.
| 1922 Youth's Companion 30 Nov. (ed. L. Thompson, 1954) 84 The ‘black shirts’ have beaten down Communism by force of arms. 1923 P. Phillips (title) The ‘Red’ Dragon and the Black Shirts. 1923 Weekly Dispatch 28 Jan. 9 The ‘scotching’ of Bolshevism in Italy by the black-shirted Fascisti. a 1930 D. H. Lawrence Phoenix II (1968) 534 She cares terribly because far-off, invisible, hypothetical Italians wear black shirts. 1934 H. G. Wells Exper. Autobiogr. ii. ix. 782 It was a gathering of Mosley's black⁓shirts. 1935 Ann. Reg. 1934 17 The wearing of a distinctive uniform—in this case a black shirt. Ibid. 51 Next day the whole of England was ringing with the cry of ‘blackshirt brutality’. |