knickers

English

Women's knickers

Etymology

Short for knickerbockers.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈnɪkəz/

Noun

1. (colloquial, now US, rare) Knickerbockers.
   • 1931, William Faulkner, Sanctuary, Vintage 1993, p. 29:

     Students in the University were not permitted to keep cars, and the men – hatless, in knickers and bright pull-overs – looked down upon the town boys who wore hats cupped rigidly upon pomaded heads [...].

   • 1946, Mezz Mezzrow and Bernard Wolfe, Really the Blues, Payback Press 1999, p. 77:

     He was a student at Notre Dame, a robust Joe-College kind of kid, husky and tall and always dressed in plus-four knickers.

2. (UK, New Zealand) Women's underpants.
   • 2010, Sali Hughes, ‘Calendar girls galore’, The Guardian, 24 Apr 2010:

     The debate here is not over whether raising £26,000 (and counting) for our troops is a wonderful thing – it unarguably is – but over whether, whenever times are tough and money must be found, our default reaction as women should be to take off our knickers to help out?

   For attributive usage of sense 2 see knicker.

Translations

knickerbockers

• French: knickers (fr) m pl, knickerbockers (fr) m pl
• Hindi: निकर (hi) m (nikar), जाँघिया (hi) m (jāṅghiyā), जांघिया m (jāṅghiyā), चड्डी (hi) f (caḍḍī), कच्छा (hi) m (kacchā), कच्छ (hi) m (kacch)
• Italian: pantaloni alla zuava m pl
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Kabuverdianu: volvu

panties — see panties

Interjection

knickers

1. A mild exclamation of annoyance.

Translations

a mild exclamation of annoyance

• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}

See also

• French knickers
• get one's knickers in a twist

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French

Alternative forms

• knicker

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /kni.kœʁ/, /ni.kœʁ/

• Audio:

  (file)

Noun

knickers m pl (plural only)

1. knickerbockers

   Il est venu en knickers. ― He came in knickers.

Usage notes

• The singular form knicker is just another spelling for the plural form which may refer to one or more pair of trousers.

Further reading

• “knickers”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.