pants - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (2024)

FAQs

When British people say pants? ›

In the UK, pants are undergarments or underwear. If you're from the U.S. or Canada, pants are the clothes you wear over your underwear, pulling them on one long leg at a time.

When trousers of a similar style became popular during the Restoration in England, they became known as pantaloons, Pantaloon being an Anglicization of Pantalone. Fashions changed over the years, but pantaloons continued to be the word used to refer to various types of trousers.

It was because each trouser was separate, but the two were joined somehow too fit round the waist. (They were called pantaloons then). So all kinds of trousers have followed what is a tradition of using a plural name for the - now - joined up garment.

Such clothing became known as pantaloons. The word pantaloons was later used for various types of trousers and is still sometimes heard today. The usual term now, however, is pants, which is short for pantaloons.

British people call daks “trousers”, unless they're talking about jeans specifically in which case they'll more than likely call them “jeans”. Otherwise, it's trousers. Never daks, and never, ever pants. “Pants” are underwear.

Eventually, women adopted men's undergarments for themselves, with some modifications. This is the point where the ubiquitous term “pants” has its beginnings. “Pantaloons”, “pants”, and “panties” all come from the same remarkable origin, a Catholic saint, martyred in the 1st century A.D. named Saint Pantaleon.

By 100 AD, the wearing of pants was still considered odd in the Roman world, but Romans did introduce the wearing of a particular type of pants called braccae. This style of legwear had a drawstring.

Pants were also called 'breches' or 'braes,' which were trousers that went just below the knee, where they were tied or fastened. Some of these pants also were tied at the ankle. Today we would call them breeches or knickers.

Think of items that are usually referred to in plural—often preceded by “pair of” or something similar, even when there is only one item: pliers, glasses, scissors, sunglasses, tweezers, etc. So, pants is a type of noun that is used only in its plural form, even when there is only one item being discussed.

Panties are a term exclusive to women's (cough) "lower" underwear. Lingerie is a broad term referring to women's underwear (top and bottom), as well as some kinds of sleepwear. It has connotations of fanciness. Depending on style, men's underwear can be called boxers or briefs.

Why were pants called knickers? ›

It is a shortened form of knickerbockers, a type of baggy breeches fastened at the knee. Knickerbockers got their name from Diedrich Knickerbocker, the fictional author of Washington Irving's A History of New York (1809), in part of which he chronicles the history of Dutch settlers in America.

In the UK, “pants” typically refers to underwear. However, “pants” can also be used as an equivalent of the word "bad" e.g. "That's pants!" Yet another classic British slang term of insult. A “prat” is someone who is full of themselves and, almost invariably, stupid as well.

breeches (informal) breeks. britches (Appalachia, Southern US)

In the UK pants means underwear. Colloquially if we say something is "Pants" we mean it's rubbish or really bad/not good (bit with vaguely humorous undertones). Therefore "Bag of Pants" would mean something especially rubbish or sub-par.

uncountable noun. If you say that something is pants, you mean that it is very poor in quality. [British, informal] The place is pants, yet so popular.

Trousers (British English), slacks, or pants (American and Canadian English) are an item of clothing worn from the waist to anywhere between the knees and the ankles, covering both legs separately (rather than with cloth extending across both legs as in robes, skirts, dresses and kilts).

The British English term, short trousers, is used, only for shorts that are a short version of ordinary trousers (i.e., pants or slacks in American English).

In the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa they are known as tracksuit bottoms or trackies. In Australia and New Zealand, they are also commonly known as trackpants, tracky daks or joggers.