{"id":8158,"date":"2020-09-21T08:02:57","date_gmt":"2020-09-21T08:02:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/?p=8158"},"modified":"2023-09-12T07:14:45","modified_gmt":"2023-09-12T07:14:45","slug":"slacks-pants-trousers-difference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/slacks-pants-trousers-difference\/","title":{"rendered":"Pants, Trousers &#038; Slacks \u2014 The Difference Explained"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>img#mv-trellis-img-1::before{padding-top:150%; }img#mv-trellis-img-1{display:block;}<\/style><p>And today&rsquo;s topic is&hellip; pants! Wait, no, I mean the topic is trousers. Or is it slacks?<\/p>\n<p>Actually, we&rsquo;re going to take a look at all three of these near-synonyms and figure out what, if anything, is the difference between slacks, pants, and trousers.<\/p>\n<div class=\"content-box-grey\"><strong>Table of Contents<\/strong><br>\n<strong><a href=\"#difference-between-pants-trousers-slacks\">Difference between Pants, Trousers, and Slacks<\/a><\/strong><br>\n<strong><a href=\"#pants-the-long-and-the-short-of-it\">Pants: the Long and the Short of It<\/a><\/strong><br>\n<strong><a href=\"#origin-of-pants\">The Origin of Pants<\/a><\/strong><br>\n<strong><a href=\"#trousers-vs-pants\">Trousers VS Pants<\/a><\/strong><br>\n<strong><a href=\"#etymology-of-trousers\">The Etymology of Trousers<\/a><\/strong><br>\n<strong><a href=\"#slacks-loosely-speaking\">Slacks: Loosely Speaking, They&rsquo;re Pants<\/a><\/strong><br>\n<strong><a href=\"#etymology-of-slacks\">The Etymology of Slacks<\/a><\/strong><br>\n<strong><a href=\"#bonus-pants-verb-version\">Bonus Pants, Verb Version<\/a><\/strong><br>\n<strong><a href=\"#bonus-pants-british-version\">Bonus Pants, British Version<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"difference-between-pants-trousers-slacks\">\n<h2>What&rsquo;s the difference between pants, trousers and slacks?<\/h2>\n<\/h2><p><strong>The difference between slacks, pants, and trousers is that in the US, pants cover waist to ankles; in the UK, pants mean underwear. Trousers in British English are equivalent to pants in American English, referring to leg-covering clothing. Slacks are loosely cut pants often worn semi-formally.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"pants-the-long-and-the-short-of-it\">\n<h2>Pants: the long and the short of it<\/h2>\n<\/h2><p>As described above, in American English, &ldquo;pants&rdquo; refers to the type of clothing that has two legs covering you from your waist to your ankles.<\/p>\n<p>When used in this way, pants can refer to <em>any<\/em> kind of pants. Jeans are pants, and so are chinos and khakis and suit pants.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, even slacks are pants. (If you want to get technical, trousers are also pants, but we&rsquo;ll get to that later.)<\/p>\n<p>In British English, however, the word &ldquo;pants&rdquo; carries a very different meaning.<\/p>\n<p>If you ask an English friend if they like your pants, you&rsquo;re likely to get a very strange look as a response.<\/p>\n<p>That&rsquo;s because in British English the word &ldquo;pants&rdquo; refers to underpants rather than the type of outwear this word refers to in American English.<\/p>\n<h3>&nbsp;<\/h3>\n<h3>Examples<\/h3>\n<p>&ldquo;The pants that go with my new suit already have a hole in them.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I bought a really comfortable pair of khaki pants yesterday.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>In these examples, we are clearly in an American setting.<\/p>\n<p>Suits don&rsquo;t typically come with matching undergarments, and khaki would be a very unusual (and probably uncomfortable) material for underwear as well.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I laughed so hard I nearly peed in my pants.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Although this could be American English as well, it works equally well in British English.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;My mum always made me pack five changes of pants no matter how short a trip we were taking, which was very embarrassing when airport security dumped my suitcase out in front of everyone.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Here, there&rsquo;s nothing embarrassing about American-style pants, so the speaker is probably referring to undergarments.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"origin-of-pants\">\n<h2>The origin of pants<\/h2>\n<\/h2><p>No matter its meaning, the word &ldquo;pants&rdquo; has an interesting history. Technically, this is called its &ldquo;etymology,&rdquo; or word origin.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Pants&rdquo; came to English from French and Italian in the late 1500s via the words &ldquo;pantalon&rdquo; (French) and &ldquo;pantalone&rdquo; (Italian).<\/p>\n<p>The French word actually refers to a stock character named Pantaloon, essentially a clown-like buffoon who wore a pair of tight pants as part of his costume.<\/p>\n<p>In Italian, the word &ldquo;pantalone&rdquo; <em>also<\/em> refers to a stock character named Pantaloon, although in this case, the character was not as clown-like.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"trousers-vs-pants\">\n<h2>Trousers VS pants<\/h2>\n<\/h2><p>Now that we&rsquo;ve defined pants, how are trousers different?<\/p>\n<p>In <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/most-if-not-all-punctuation-commas\/\">most<\/a><\/strong>, if not all, cases, the word &ldquo;trousers&rdquo; is actually completely identical to the word &ldquo;pants&rdquo; except for being British English instead of American English.<\/p>\n<p>Some people will use the word &ldquo;trousers&rdquo; in American English to refer to pants, but this is typically only done if they are trying to appear intellectual or professorial or in a very formal outfit.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, some style guides will define trousers as a specific type of pants or use the way the piece of clothing is cut to distinguish between the two.<\/p>\n<p>While both trousers and pants fit the definition used for &ldquo;pants&rdquo; above, the argument here is that trousers are actually created by sewing together one piece of fabric for each leg.<\/p>\n<p>Pants, on the other hand, is a more general term and may be created from a single piece of cloth.<\/p>\n<p>Again, though, this use of &ldquo;trousers&rdquo; are non-standard. Unless you&rsquo;re studying to become a tailor or fashion expert, all you really need to remember is that American = pants and British = trousers.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>Examples<\/h3>\n<p>&ldquo;When I went to England, I had to remember to ask for trousers instead of pants in the clothing store.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;The trousers my cousin wore to London for his job interview were very posh.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>In both these contexts, we are pretty clearly using British English.<\/p>\n<p>Note that when using trousers, just like with pants, you need to treat the noun as a plural. That means were and are, compared to was and is.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"etymology-of-trousers\">\n<h2>The etymology of trousers<\/h2>\n<\/h2><p>The origin of trousers is a little unclear, but it&rsquo;s equally as fascinating as that of pants.<\/p>\n<p>Although &ldquo;trousers&rdquo; is a bit more modern, it has its origin in the word &ldquo;trouse&rdquo; that has been in existence since roughly the 1500s. Unlike &ldquo;pants,&rdquo; this word comes to English from Irish and Gaelic.<\/p>\n<p>In these Celtic languages, the word &ldquo;triubhas&rdquo; referred to a specific type of garment that was tight-fitting and covered both legs to the ankles.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Trouse&rdquo; is also why some people refer to &ldquo;trousers&rdquo; as pants which have a separate piece of fabric for each leg.<\/p>\n<p>The Oxford English Dictionary notes that the &ldquo;trouse&rdquo; was &ldquo;divided below [the buttocks] to form a separate covering for each thigh.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Although &ldquo;trouse&rdquo; is now an obscure historical term, &ldquo;trousers&rdquo; lives in and has been the more common use in English since the early 1600s.<br>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-8168\" src=\"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Slacks-Pants-Trousers-Difference-Updated.jpg\" alt=\"The Difference between Slacks, Pants &amp; Trousers\" width=\"1000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Slacks-Pants-Trousers-Difference-Updated.jpg 320w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Slacks-Pants-Trousers-Difference-Updated-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Slacks-Pants-Trousers-Difference-Updated-683x1024.jpg 683w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Slacks-Pants-Trousers-Difference-Updated-768x1152.jpg 768w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Slacks-Pants-Trousers-Difference-Updated-561x842.jpg 561w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Slacks-Pants-Trousers-Difference-Updated-364x546.jpg 364w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Slacks-Pants-Trousers-Difference-Updated-728x1092.jpg 728w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Slacks-Pants-Trousers-Difference-Updated-608x912.jpg 608w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Slacks-Pants-Trousers-Difference-Updated-758x1137.jpg 758w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" data-pin-media=\"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Slacks-Pants-Trousers-Difference-Updated.jpg\"><\/noscript><img loading=\"eager\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-8168 eager-load\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%201000%201500'%3E%3Crect%20width='1000'%20height='1500'%20style='fill:%23e3e3e3'\/%3E%3C\/svg%3E\" alt=\"The Difference between Slacks, Pants &amp; Trousers\" width=\"1000\" height=\"1500\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px\" data-pin-media=\"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Slacks-Pants-Trousers-Difference-Updated.jpg\" id=\"mv-trellis-img-1\" data-src=\"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Slacks-Pants-Trousers-Difference-Updated.jpg\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Slacks-Pants-Trousers-Difference-Updated.jpg 320w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Slacks-Pants-Trousers-Difference-Updated-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Slacks-Pants-Trousers-Difference-Updated-683x1024.jpg 683w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Slacks-Pants-Trousers-Difference-Updated-768x1152.jpg 768w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Slacks-Pants-Trousers-Difference-Updated-561x842.jpg 561w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Slacks-Pants-Trousers-Difference-Updated-364x546.jpg 364w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Slacks-Pants-Trousers-Difference-Updated-728x1092.jpg 728w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Slacks-Pants-Trousers-Difference-Updated-608x912.jpg 608w, https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Slacks-Pants-Trousers-Difference-Updated-758x1137.jpg 758w\" data-svg=\"1\" data-trellis-processed=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"slacks-loosely-speaking\">\n<h2>Slacks: loosely speaking, they&rsquo;re pants<\/h2>\n<\/h2><p>Our third word is both less and more complicated than the difference between pants and trousers.<\/p>\n<p>The word &ldquo;slacks&rdquo; refers to a specific type of pants (or, in the UK, a specific type of trousers).<\/p>\n<p>What type is a matter of some debate.<\/p>\n<p>Some style guides suggest that slacks are only formal pants, while others say that slacks are completely different from the type of pants that come with a suit or other formal wear.<\/p>\n<p>Going back to the Oxford English Dictionary to resolve the debate, we learn that slacks are &ldquo;loosely-cut trousers for informal wear.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>This makes sense if you think about it, because &ldquo;slack&rdquo; is another word for &ldquo;loose,&rdquo; and you wouldn&rsquo;t want loose pants in a formal setting.<\/p>\n<p>While the dictionary claims slacks are mostly for women, this particular distinction has largely disappeared, and today<strong>,<\/strong>you will find slacks in the men&rsquo;s section of clothing stores as well.<\/p>\n<p>That said because there is so much confusion over what &ldquo;slacks&rdquo; means, your best bet is to confirm the intended meaning if you&rsquo;re in a situation where wearing the wrong kind of pants might get you in trouble.<\/p>\n<p>If, for instance, you have RSVP&rsquo;d to a party that says to wear &ldquo;a white tie and slacks,&rdquo; you should check to make sure you&rsquo;re wearing appropriate clothing.<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, in some older books and newspapers, you might see &ldquo;slacks&rdquo; used in another way.<\/p>\n<p>That&rsquo;s because this word used to refer to the seat of your pants, presumably because sitting down multiple times stresses the fabric here and can make it loose or slack.<\/p>\n<p>This is an archaic word, however, and &ldquo;slacks&rdquo; has not been used to refer to this since the late 1800s.<\/p>\n<p>In most cases, or if you&rsquo;re just trying to resolve an argument over the meaning of &ldquo;slacks,&rdquo; you can point to the definition of &ldquo;slacks&rdquo; as loose-fitting, generally informal trousers (or pants).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"etymology-of-slacks\">\n<h2>The etymology of slacks<\/h2>\n<\/h2><p>Slacks, interestingly, have the oldest history of all these pants-related words.<\/p>\n<p>That&rsquo;s not because slacks, which have only been around since the 1800s, have a longer history, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/but-rather-in-a-sentence\/\">but rather<\/a><\/strong> because they come from the adjective or adverb &ldquo;slack,&rdquo; meaning loose.<\/p>\n<p>This word comes to English from Germanic, the very early proto-language from which Old English, Dutch, German, Norse, and a variety of other languages.<\/p>\n<p>Scholars think that this word came into Germanic from the Latin word &ldquo;laxus,&rdquo; also meaning loose.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, &ldquo;slacks&rdquo; is arguably the most English word of all three options.<\/p>\n<p>At least, it&rsquo;s the one that has existed longest, with the use of slack as an adjective dating all the way back to the late 800s.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"bonus-pants-verb-version\">Bonus pants, verb version<\/h2>\n<p>One interesting thing about the word &ldquo;pants&rdquo; is that in both American and British English, you can use it as a verb as well as a noun.<\/p>\n<p>If you see someone say to &ldquo;pants&rdquo; someone, it means to pull down their pants (or trousers).<\/p>\n<p>While this is not a very polite thing to do, it is a good example of how language can change over time, with a word that initially referred to a piece of clothing changing to mean an action relating to it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"bonus-pants-british-version\">Bonus pants, British version<\/h2>\n<p>The word &ldquo;pants&rdquo; also has an additional unusual usage in British English. Here, the word stands in as slang for silly, useless or a waste of time.<\/p>\n<p>For example, if you see a movie that is so bad it&rsquo;s not even funny, you might turn to your British friend and say, &ldquo;This movie is absolute pants.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>As a nice bonus, the word &ldquo;pants&rdquo; doesn&rsquo;t carry the ableist connotation that many other similar words (dumb, lame, crazy) do.<\/p>\n<p>It seems like pants are a really odd thing to use to talk down about something, but remember that in British English, the word refers to underwear.<\/p>\n<p>According to language <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.worldwidewords.org\/topicalwords\/tw-pan4.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">expert<\/a><\/strong> Michael Quinion, it&rsquo;s the underwear connection that gives this meaning of &ldquo;pants&rdquo; its origin.<\/p>\n<p>An older generation used the word &ldquo;knickers&rdquo; (another word for underpants) as a mild swear word, which morphed to pants in the 1990s.<\/p>\n<p>It&rsquo;s worth noting this slang is from the 1990s, so kids today probably don&rsquo;t use it. Indeed, if you describe something as &ldquo;pants&rdquo; in this way, people will probably think you&rsquo;re trying to be posh or that you&rsquo;re very out of date.<\/p>\n<p>Although that&rsquo;s <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/comma-before-or-after-yet\/\">yet<\/a><\/strong> another example of changing language, it&rsquo;s also complete pants, really, because this is an amusing turn of phrase that deserves a more permanent place in the way we speak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And today&rsquo;s topic is&hellip; pants! Wait, no, I mean the topic is trousers. Or is it slacks? Actually, we&rsquo;re going to take a look at all three of these near-synonyms and figure out what, if anything, is the difference between slacks, pants, and trousers. Table of Contents Difference between Pants, Trousers, and Slacks Pants: the &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8161,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"disable-in-feed":false,"article-schema-type":"","disable-critical-css":false,"_convertkit_action_broadcast_export":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,1117],"tags":[73,72,74],"class_list":["post-8158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english","category-vocabulary","tag-pants","tag-slacks","tag-trousers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8158"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27356,"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8158\/revisions\/27356"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linguaholic.com\/linguablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}