The Innovative Usage Thread

[alynnidalar]

I would say "I'm not wearing pants at work" (I am, btw, they're my favorite pair of jeans) if I was deliberately trying to garden-path people. (does that even qualify as garden-pathing? I'm sure you guys know what I mean, though; deliberately trying to get someone to interpret a statement incorrectly at first)

However, in other contexts "pants" does indeed imply long pants to me. My prototypical image of pants is definitely of long pants, not shorts.

In the "this is the third time I've worn pants since moving to Denver" example, I think context makes it a little more immediately clear the speaker means pants (as opposed to shorts or skirts), not pants (as opposed to NOTHING AT ALL). If I were saying this sentence without trying to garden-path anybody, I might more naturally say "this is the third time I've worn actual pants..." to emphasize that I mean PANTS, as in pants-pants, the most pantsy type of pants, specifically long pants, not lower-body clothing in general.

In stores, I wouldn't be surprised to find a "pants" section (with long pants) and a "shorts" section (with short ones), although I've never consciously noticed if store signs are that way. And if someone asked me a question like "are you going to wear pants or shorts?", I wouldn't find that an odd question either.

[Zaarin]

I thought that was the usual meaning of "pants" in America.

IMD, all sorts of trousers--short as well as long--are "pants". I would not say, "I'm not wearing pants at work" because I happen to have on a pair of shorts at the moment. (I would say "I'm not wearing slacks at work", but Wiktionary helpfully tells me this word "is old-fashioned and now used only by older people".)

In direct contrast to British usage, however, "underwear" is not "pants". Again, if I say "He wasn't wearing pants", it doesn't automatically imply that he was not wearing y-fronts or boxer shorts.

Well, I admit that I would not use the phrase "I am not wearing pants" unless I were literally naked from the waist down, but on the other hand I wouldn't refer to "shorts" as "pants" either. (And I have to agree with Wiktionary's usage notes about "slacks"--I have only heard it used by people my age [mid twenties] in the fixed phrase "dress slacks," and even there "dress pants" is definitely more common.)

[Chagen]

This is very minor, but I am currently watching some Let's Plays by a person who consistently pronounces "gauge" with [a] (or whatever the low back vowel phoneme of English is, don't feel like pulling out IPA for this) instead of the expected [ej]. She (or he...they have an androgynous voice) has done this several times without commenting on it. You can hear it here at 26:23: "So on this stage you want to start at the right...on the human-youkai gauge...".

I've never heard anyone pronounce it like this before. Neither have I seen any comment on youtube pointing it out (granted, they get like five comments max usually). Is this attested at all? The person otherwise speaks English perfectly without any sort of foreign accent (though they might be French, as I heard of them from a French LP'er who knows a bunch of other French LP'ers.

[Sumelic]

To me, that just sounds like a perfectly understandable spelling pronunciation for someone with the cot-caught merger. As such, I wouldn't be surprised if there are other examples of it, but I also don't think it's common or likely to become common.

[jal]

Well, I admit that I would not use the phrase "I am not wearing pants" unless I were literally naked from the waist down, but on the other hand I wouldn't refer to "shorts" as "pants" either. (And I have to agree with Wiktionary's usage notes about "slacks"--I have only heard it used by people my age [mid twenties] in the fixed phrase "dress slacks," and even there "dress pants" is definitely more common.)

As a non-native speaker, my sense of usage comes from what I've heard on tv and in movies, and I associate "pants" with long trousers only. Also, though I otherwise focus on British English, I don't associate "pants" with underwear, probably because there are less British movies or tv series I've watched (or perhaps because the Brits are less prone to talking about their underwear...).


JAL

[Imralu]

I thought that was the usual meaning of "pants" in America.

IMD, all sorts of trousers--short as well as long--are "pants". I would not say, "I'm not wearing pants at work" because I happen to have on a pair of shorts at the moment. (I would say "I'm not wearing slacks at work", but Wiktionary helpfully tells me this word "is old-fashioned and now used only by older people".)

In direct contrast to British usage, however, "underwear" is not "pants". Again, if I say "He wasn't wearing pants", it doesn't automatically imply that he was not wearing y-fronts or boxer shorts.

Same for me. I do use the word "trousers" to indicate long pants though and would probably be more likely to use that than "slacks" unless I really wanted to specify slacks rather than any other kind of long pants. For some reason though, jeans are not trousers to me but any other long pants are. So basically,
pants is a hypernym to trousers and shorts, and trousers (or long pants) is a hypernym to slacks. My use of trousers is probably not typical for Australians. I think I got it from my mum who has a touch of an Irish dialect.

I remember watching Becker when I was a teenager and there was an episode where one of the characters starts dating a mailman wearing shorts and Becker says something like "Were all the men wearing pants taken?" I was so confused - he's wearing pants! That was the first time I'd ever heard pants used to specify long pants only. Maybe it's because shorts are completely fucking normal in Australia. I wonder if southern USians are more likely to have similar feelings about shorts to me than northern ones, Canadians etc, for whom shorts are less normal.

I'm always kind of undecided about whether undies count as pants or not. Lately I've started using "naked" to mean "only wearing underpants" as well, and I know I don't agree with it but I say it anyway because it's easier to say than "only wearing underpants". Not sure if it's German influence or what. My flatmates say it too.

I have a British friend who likes to pretend that all other dialects are incorrect and I broke her by asking "What is shorts short for? What's the long form of that word?" She was like "Short ... pants, fuck you!"

[Imralu]

This guy talking about a cicada and a wasp, mentioning both of them laying eggs ... and referring to both of them the whole time with masculine pronouns. "He'll lay his eggs ..." Um ....

[Zaarin]

I wonder if southern USians are more likely to have similar feelings about shorts to me than northern ones, Canadians etc, for whom shorts are less normal.

Well for reference, I live in South Florida and have for the past eleven years...Though as I mentioned before, I never wear shorts; I don't even own any.

[linguoboy]

However, in other contexts "pants" does indeed imply long pants to me. My prototypical image of pants is definitely of long pants, not shorts.

Same here, but for me the prototypical contrast isn't to shorts either, it's to skirts.

In fact, my first reaction was to ask myself whether this person was non-gender-conforming in a way in which I simply hadn't noticed before.

[Zaarin]

However, in other contexts "pants" does indeed imply long pants to me. My prototypical image of pants is definitely of long pants, not shorts.

Same here, but for me the prototypical contrast isn't to shorts either, it's to skirts.

In fact, my first reaction was to ask myself whether this person was non-gender-conforming in a way in which I simply hadn't noticed before.

For me, pants, shorts, and skirts are all distinct categories in opposition to each other.

[Yng]

I have a British friend who likes to pretend that all other dialects are incorrect and I broke her by asking "What is shorts short for? What's the long form of that word?" She was like "Short ... pants, fuck you!"

?

short trousers, obvs

[Imralu]

short trousers, obvs

Seriously? Does anyone actually say that?

[finlay]

well, no, for us shorts isn't short for anything.

[Yng]

what finlay said

But like, if someone asked me 'what is shorts short for' with a big smug 'lol wat r u gonna say now british man' grin on their face I would go 'well short trousers'

I actually think 'short trousers' is a Real Usage, albeit maybe a slightly archaic one. I feel like posh people in period satires or whatever sometimes say something like 'he's still in his short trousers?' anyway, who cares.

It seems very mysterious to me that a native speaker of British English should go 'short pants', when to us pants are if anything much shorter than shorts. Your British friend has been in America (Australia??? idk about the distribution of pants or imralus) too long, I think.

[KathTheDragon]

Yeah, I wouldn't say that "shorts" is short for anything, given that "short trousers" are longer on the leg than shorts are, IMD.

[jmcd]

Or they could be from Yorkshire or any other part of England that has used 'pants' to mean 'trousers' well before there were any English speakers in the Americas or Oceania.

[Yng]

seems pretty unlikely jmcd given that a) I'm pretty sure that usage is archaic at best and b) more importantly this was somebody who was presumably asked this question 'what is 'shorts' short for' specifically in order to prove to her that 'pants' is an acceptable word in spite of her semi-ironic dialect-bashing, allowing us to infer that she does not speak a dialect that uses this word otherwise what on earth would be the point

[Vijay]

Are "shorts" "pants" (bzw. "trousers")?

Today someone posted that this was "the third time I've worn pants since moving to Denver". I was momentarily baffled until he mentioned that he was in the courtroom today and thought shorts wouldn't be appropriate. Has anyone else come across a similar usage of "pants" to mean "slacks/long trousers"?

"Pants" unqualified always means "long pants" to me; "short pants" are "shorts."

Same for me.

Well, I admit that I would not use the phrase "I am not wearing pants" unless I were literally naked from the waist down

I have probably used that phrase before to tell my parents that I was insisting on wearing shorts. I hate wearing (long) pants in hot weather, or at least used to. My legs are hairy and get all itchy.

Have you ever watched Manjula's kitchen? She pronounces all her initial st-, sp- and sk- clusters with an 'e' before them, like Spanish speakers. Consequently, she says 'tea espoon', which blends into a really long, sing-songy /i:/. She also says tabley spoon. Really endearing.

I don't think I have, but my sister-in-law's dad does the exact same thing. Ischool, isleep, istand, ispecial...

[Travis B.]

To me, pants are always long pants, shorts are always, well, shorts (and no, is not short for anything), short pants are long pants that are somewhat short, not shorts, and the word trousers does not exist in my dialect.

[Vijay]

For me, pants are always long pants, shorts are always shorts and not short for anything, either, trousers is some kind of British word or something for (long) pants, and short pants is the word that doesn't exist IMD. (Well, okay, I mean that it doesn't exist for me at all in the sense that I'm kind of confused whenever I hear it. It sounds like another term for shorts or something used by people who don't wear shorts on a nearly daily basis like I do ).

[Travis B.]

Short pants to me sounds like another way of expressing that known as capris.

And yes, I am perfectly aware of the word "trousers" - it just is that the word is never used here, to the point of essentially being foreign to the dialect here.

[Vijay]

Short pants to me sounds like another way of expressing that known as capris.

And I have no idea what those are, either.

I have a very simplistic view of pants. It's not often that they come in handy over here, really.

[Travis B.]

Short pants to me sounds like another way of expressing that known as capris.

And I have no idea what those are, either.

Basically, pants that only extend down to one's lower legs, stereotypically worn by and marketed to women.

[linguoboy]

Short pants to me sounds like another way of expressing that known as capris.

And I have no idea what those are, either.

I once found a helpful terminological chart for women's slacks, since they apparently occur in a full range of lengths from just below the knee to touching the floor. Men's slacks, on the other hand, come in essentially two lengths: regular and highwaters.

I'm now wondering how those of you for whom "short pants" is not an antiquated synonym for "shorts" would have interpreted the expression "since I wore short pants" before this discussion took place.

[Vijay]

I don't think I ever really understood that expression. I don't even get it if you explain to me that short pants just means shorts. To me, shorts are such a common thing to wear that that would be like saying "since I wore a shirt."