I came across the words, ‘anything in a skirt” in the following sentence of Jeffery Archer’s “The Fourth Estate”:- Page 202.
“(Captain Armstrong is entitled to a car and driver) if the brigadier
wants his daughter’s photo on the front page of Der Telegraph when she
visits Berlin next month.” “Why should he want that?” said Armstrong.
“My bet is that he can’t get her married off him in England.” said
Sally. “And I’ve discovered, anything in a skirt is jumped on over
here.”
As I was unfamiliar with the word, ‘anything in a skirt” I consulted Cambridge, Oxford, and Merriam Webster English Dictionary. None of them carries this word.
However, with the example of the usage of this word on Google search, I was easily able to guess what it means:
My husband is a flirt and sleeps with anything in skirt! He sleeps
with girls; women and I have been embarrassed by his frequent affairs
with my maids. –
www.nairaland.com/…/husband-flirt-sleeps-anything-
Google Ngram shows that this phrase started to be in use around 1915, and its usage started to sharply rise in 1990s.
Can I use “anything in a skirt“ as a plain alternative to “female” in conversation, particularly with women? Does it have any derogatory nuance or obscene tone, or just is as neutral as ‘women’?
It’s intriguing that the author let a young lady utter this phrase.
Best Answer
It's meant to emphasise the subject's promiscuity. In this form it is a replacement for "any woman" and carries no undertones with respect to women, with the possible exception of implying that wearing skirts is associated with women.
It is certainly not a general or neutral alternative to women in other cases. "Skirt" is often considered a derogatory term for women.
For similar figures of speech, compare "anything with a pulse", or "anything that breathes".