Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

trousers

UK/ˈtɹaʊzəz/US/ˈtɹaʊzɚz/
nounA2+Common in everyday speech and writing · #3,662 of 15,258leans spoken

Trousers are what you wear on your legs, with a separate tube for each. Always plural, however many you own.

This is the British word, and Americans say pants, which in Britain means underwear, so the pair causes more confusion than almost any other. You buy a pair of trousers. English gets an idiom about authority from them, since whoever wears the trousers in a household makes the decisions. Being caught with your trousers down means being caught unprepared and embarrassed.

Dressed_for_summer.jpg: Ed Yourdon derivative work: Themightyquill (talk) · CC BY-SA 2.0

Definitions of trousers

  1. 1nountrousersAn outer garment covering the body from the waist down, with a part for each leg.A2+

    “He bought a new pair of trousers for the interview.”

Also accepted in games: pants

Phrases it lives in

  • wear the trousers — be the one who makes the decisions in a household

Where it comes from

Trousers came from Irish. Middle Irish triubus meant close-fitting shorts, English took it in as trouse, and the s was added later because that is the ending we give to things that come in pairs.

  1. Proto-Germanic

    *þeuhabrōks — loincloth, trousers

  2. Old High German

    diohbruoh — loincloth, trousers

  3. Gothic

    *𐌸𐌹𐌿𐌷𐌱𐍂𐍉𐌺𐍃

  4. Latin

    trabrugi

  5. Old Occitan

    trebucs

  6. Old French

    trebus

  7. Anglo-Norman

    tribuz

  8. Old Irish

    tribus

  9. mga

    triubus — close-fitting shorts

  10. English, today

    trousers

Built from

  • tubruci · Latin — leg-coverings
  • *brōks · Proto-Germanic — leggings, trousers

Attested since the 1610s, from the earlier form trouzes (attested since the 1580s), extended from trouse (1570s), with plural ending typical of things in pairs, from mga triubus (“close-fitting shorts”), from Old Irish tribus, of unknown origin. The unexplained intrusive second -r- is perhaps due to the influence of drawers. a doublet of trews. Old Irish tribus is probably a borrowing of Anglo-Norman tribuz, trebuz, from Old French trebus, from Old Occitan trebucs, trabucs, from Latin trabrugi, tribuces, tubruci (“leg-coverings”), from an early gem - language, perhaps Gothic 𐌸𐌹𐌿𐌷𐌱𐍂𐍉𐌺𐍃 or Old High German diohbruoh (“loincloth, trousers”), ultimately from Proto-Germanic þeuhabrōks (“loincloth, trousers”), a compound of Proto-Germanic þeuhą (“thigh”) + brōks (“leggings, trousers”), equivalent to thigh + breeches. Compare obsolete Modern German Diechbruch (“short legwear, knee breeches, loincloth”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Clothes & Fashion, A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 2 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

trousers in the wild

  • Nowadays, they are one of the most popular types of trousers in Western culture.

    Jeans

  • There are a variety of shorts, ranging from knee-length short trousers that can in some situations be worn as formal clothes to beachwear and athletic shorts.

    Shorts

  • A skirt suit is similar, but with a matching pencil skirt instead of trousers.

    Suit

  • Pedal pushers are calf-length trousers that were popular during the 1950s and the early 1960s.

    Pedal pushers

  • Made of wool, the trousers had straight legs and wide crotches and were likely made for horseback riding.

    Trousers

1 / 2

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the tribus family

tribetrouserscontribute

trousers — used about once every 650 pages · #3,662 · point at the bar for the others