Clothing Definitions — definitions of garments and clothing terms from Apparel Search
Pants are clothing for the lower body, and the term comes from pantaloons. In Canadian, Australian and American English, pants refers to a long outer garment worn over the hips and legs, the garment called trousers in British English. In British English, pants refers to underpants worn under trousers, a catch-all term for undergarments that share the feature of being worn underneath. This page explains both meanings, the construction every pair of pants shares, and the main named styles, from jeans and chinos to cargo pants and capris.
Pants are clothing for the lower body; the term comes from pantaloons.
Daisy Dukes (shorts)
Learn about the many styles of pants by viewing our types of pants terminology section.
Whatever the style name, pants are built on one pattern logic. Two leg tubes join at a fork below a waistband, and the fit is decided by a handful of measures: waist size, inseam length, rise, the distance from waistband to fork, which sets whether the pants sit high, mid or low, and the leg shape, straight, tapered, flared or wide. Closures are a zip or button fly under a waistband fastened with a button, hook or clasp, and pockets follow a small set of patterns, slanted or on-seam side pockets, welt or patch pockets behind, and coin and cargo additions by style. Belt loops, a crease pressed down each leg on dress styles, and hems finished plain or cuffed complete the standard construction.
Fabric separates the families more than cut does. Jeans are denim, a cotton twill woven for hard wear. Chinos and khakis are lighter cotton twills in tan and stone shades, between jeans and dress trousers in formality. Cargo pants add large bellows pockets on the thighs, a military inheritance, in cotton ripstop or twill. Dress trousers use suiting wools and blends and are cut to be worn with a jacket. Capris shorten the leg to mid-calf, and shorts shorten it above the knee, but both keep the same waistband, fly and pocket construction, which is why the whole family can share one definition.
The British and American meanings still cause genuine confusion, since a request to remove pants means outerwear in Chicago and underwear in London, and the word has picked up humorous use in Britain in recent decades, including as a lightly pejorative adjective among younger speakers. In the trade, trousers is the safer shared term for the outer garment, and size labels follow it: pants are sold by waist and inseam in inches in the United States and by waist with short, regular and long leg lengths in Britain. Care follows fabric, denim and cotton twill washed inside out to hold colour, wool trousers rested between wearings and pressed rather than washed often, and all styles checked at the fork and pocket corners, the points where the construction takes the most strain.
Pants are clothing for the lower body. In Canadian, Australian and American English the word means a long outer garment worn over the hips and legs. In British English that garment is called trousers, and the word pants means underpants worn beneath them.
The term pants comes from pantaloons, the close-fitting breeches named after Pantalone, a character in Italian commedia dell'arte. Pantaloons shortened first to the garment name and then to the everyday word pants in American English.
Named styles include jeans, chinos and khakis, cargo pants with bellows pockets on the legs, capris ending at mid-calf, short pants and shorts, and dress trousers. The types of pants terminology covers the full range by cut, length, fabric and use.