Shorts are summer legwear that stops above the knees. A pair of shorts, wear shorts, running shorts.
The word is always plural, like trousers and jeans, and you count them in pairs — a habit left over from when leg coverings really were two separate garments. In American English shorts can also mean underwear. Note that short and long trousers were once a mark of a boy's age.
1nounshortsLegwear that stops above the knees.
“It was so hot that everyone was wearing shorts and T-shirts.”
shorts is clothing.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)ker-
Middle English
schort
English
short
English, today
shorts
Built from
From short + -s. short comes from Middle English schort. From Middle English schort, short, from Old English sċeort, sċort (“short”), from Proto-West Germanic skurt, from Proto-Germanic skurtaz (“short”), from Proto-Indo-European (s)ker-. a doublet of shirt and skirt and curt. 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA