You could be right, but I think the meaning is closer to "short shirt."
The root word -sark or -serk comes from the Scandinavian/North Germanic invaders of Britain. (IIRC "serk" is still the word for shirt in modern Swedish.)
The word "ber-serk" means un-shirted, or "to fight without one's shirt." Some Viking warriors would strip off their shirts just before battle to show their ferocity and freak out their enemies. Thus they were called "berserkers."
< /etymological ruminations >
I was just going to ask, and .....
Thanx!!
Cool! Sounds right. I wonder where “petticoat” came from. “Short skirt?” a possible misunderstanding, perhaps. (I love etymological ruminations...My kids think I’m nuts because I’m always doing that. A good understanding of Latin, a little Greek, and a gob of Czech are fun to throw into the mix...)