Another potential for embarrassment between US and UK English
In the US pants are worn outside your underwear:
In many parts in the UK pants ARE your underwear:
So, it may be inadvisable to say ‘ooh nice pants’ in the UK at a business meeting.
Also ‘pants’ or ‘a pile of pants’ is an idiom meaning really bad, as in ‘that movie was pants’
pile of pants, noun, slang, official term of rejection. Relatively new non-swearing slang term, meaning a load of rubbish or, indeed, knickers. Pants in this sense (NB not trousers as in the US; in the UK pants means underwear) only became slang in the 1990s (according to slang lexicographer Jonathon Green).
In mathematics:
In mathematics, a pair of pants is a simple two-dimensional surface resembling a pair of pants: topologically, it is a sphere with three holes in it.
Interestingly, the loan-word ‘pantsu’ (パンツ) in Japanese suffers from the same conflicted identity – it can mean either underpants or trousers (though perhaps the former is more common).
Underwear pants for men can be called:
- underwear
- underpants
- undies
- jockey shorts
- drawers
- underdrawers
- under-dacks
- boxers
- dacks
- jocks
- skivvies
- tighty whities
- undercrackers
- skants
And for women:
- broeks (South African English)
- knickers
- panties
- pants
I always say pants… To me, those are on top and your underpants/underwear/knickers are underneath! :3
I struggle to not say pants.
Also to add to the above list… Boxers…. for boxer shorts.
And from my part of the world, the word “kecks” or “kex” is frequently used to refer to men’s trousers.
“That’s a smart pair o’ kecks he’s wearin’!”