Who Wears the Pants in the English Language?
I’m sure you’ve wondered why “pants”, “trousers”, “jeans”, “britches”, “dungarees” and all such legwear are plural, and come in pairs. A pair of socks, a pair of gloves, sure, but how can a single garment be considered a “pair”?
Well, as most odd things in our odd language, there is a historical explanation. For the purist, there is also “an” historical explanation.
If you recall pictures of the disciplined Roman legions meeting the “barbarian” hordes, you will remember that while the Romans wore tunics, the Celtic or Germanic warriors wore leggings.* Sometimes the leggings were joined together as a single garment, but more often than not there was a separate pull-on for each leg, not unlike cowboy chaps.
The Romans knew all about trousers, but disdained them as “barbaric”. After the fall of the Empire, European royalty and nobility continued to favour robes, but as time went on the more practical among them would wear leggings or long stockings, typically under the robes.
As more time passed, the stockings would become increasingly visible until the entire leg was in view, with a separate item called a codpiece (seriously!) covering the private bits and joining the two leggings. You can see how and why this awkward arrangement would soon evolve into a more common-sense single garment similar to modern trousers, and the robe became archaic. All males began to wear pants.
Curiously, in English, the plural word format was retained, and we continue to speak of a “pair of trousers”.
The story is actually a little more complex than that, but you get the gist of it.
Who says that language isn’t fascinating?