Rants on pants
I was musing t'other day on why we say "pair of pants" when it's a single object. My guess was that it was because there were two legs (hence the pair). A little research ensued and the result showed, once again, the twists and turns of the English language.
First off, the "pair" is something that we've used for hundreds of years when referring to something that's in some basic sense made up of two things. A pair of scissors, for example. In "a pair of pants" it really is the two legs that gets us the pair. Go far enough back and you'll read "a peire of hosen." We're talking Middle English at this point, round about 1300 AD. Sounds pretty much like the lederhosen you'll see in kitschy German beer halls. Anyway, hosen aren't pants. So back to work.
Well, a few hundred years later, around 1600, Italian comedies started to feature a goofy old man who ran around in tight trousers. His name? Pantaloun. Big yucks apparently ensued from seeing his skinny legs in tight trousers. We're talking serious comedy here. It got so much play that people started to refer to the trousers themselves as pantaloons. Much the same as if people had started to refer to big black eyebrows as Groucho's, after Groucho Marx. Which they didn't, of course, but they might have. If they'd thought about it.
So anyway, after a while pantaloons became the name du jour for trousers of all kinds. And, as always, laziness then worked its magic and the word got shortened to pants. Leaving us with "pair of pants."
- And that's today's word from the bird
