Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 April 20

Language desk
< April 19 << Mar | April | May >> April 21 >
Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.


April 20

edit

When did pants become more common than trousers in American English?

edit

Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 00:19, 20 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know, but there's no doubt that pants derives from the word pantaloons. Akld guy (talk) 06:30, 20 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Here's some of the relevant OED entry, with some of the examples - earliest is 1835. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 23:12, 20 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]
a. Originally (colloquial): pantaloons. Later: trousers of any kind (in early use applied to men's trousers, but in the 20th cent. extended to include those worn by both men and women).Chiefly North American, New Zealand, Australian, and South African.
1835 Southern Literary Messenger 1 358 In walked my friend—pumps and tight pants on—white gloves and perfumed handkerchief.
1846 O. W. Holmes Rhymed Lesson 515 The thing named ‘pants’ in certain documents, A word not made for gentlemen, but ‘gents’.
1854 ‘C. Bede’ Further Adventures Mr. Verdant Green (ed. 2) x. 89 Seated with wash-leather..like the eleventh hussars..with their cherry-coloured pants.
1902 G. H. Lorimer Lett. Merchant ix. 119 We boys..couldn't walk across the floor without feeling that our pants had hiked up till they showed our feet to the knee.
1964 Times 3 Aug. 11 The pants and pantskirt as shown by Marc Bohan at Dior are for the country and around the house.
1973 N. Moss What's the Difference? p. ix I heard an American student at Cambridge University telling some English friends how he climbed over a locked gate..and tore his pants, and one of them asked in confusion, ‘But how could you tear your pants without tearing your trousers?’
P.S. you can get a feel for the trends by looking at ngram, though it's hard to separate out the exact uses of the words. Try these searches for starters: his pants vs. his trousers and put on pants vs. put on trousers. In both cases, pants shows a steep rise in the 1930s. 70.67.193.176 (talk) 23:16, 20 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Chinese language

edit

Hi Can you translate this Chinese sentence into English and Arabic language. The sentence is:

概要

於2004年4月至2006年10月在Comic Bom Bom連載。東京電視台以漢字表記《韋駄天翔》,在2005年10月1日至2006年9月30日每週的星期六早上9:30開始播放、全52話。.محمد ماجد السورميري (talk) 19:37, 20 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]