Trousers

Trouser

Trousers (British English) or pants (American English) are an item of clothing that might have originated in East Asia, worn from the waist to the ankles, covering both legs separately (rather than with cloth extending across both legs as in robes, skirts, and dresses). In the United Kingdom, the word pants generally means underwear and not trousers. Shorts are similar to trousers, but with legs that come down only to around the area of the knee, higher or lower depending on the style of the garment.

Quotes

• PANTALOONS, n. A nether habiliment of the adult civilized male. The garment is tubular and unprovided with hinges at the points of flexion. Supposed to have been invented by a humorist. Called "trousers" by the enlightened and "pants" by the unworthy.
  • Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

• And as the French we conquer'd once,
  Now give us laws for pantaloons,
  The length of breeches and the gathers,
  Port-cannons, periwigs, and feathers.
  • Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part I (1663-64), Canto III, line 923.

• People putting their clothes on backwards. Isn't that a sign of something going on wrong? Are you not paying attention? People with their hat on backwards, pants down around the crack. Isn't that a sign of something or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up?
  • Bill Cosby, "Dr Bill Cosby Speaks at the 50th Anniversary commemoration of the Brown vs Topeka Board of Education Supreme Court Decision," known as the "Pound Cake" speech (May 2004).

• If you wish,
  

I shall grow irreproachably tender:

not a man, but a cloud in trousers!

• Vladimir Mayakovsky, "The Cloud in Trousers" (1915).