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Breeches are an item of clothing covering the body from the waist down, with separate coverings for each leg.
The spelling britches reflects a common pronunciation, and is generally used in casual speech to mean "pants". Breeks is a Scots or northern English spelling and pronunciation.
See more at Trousers, Knickers.
Etymology
Breeches is a double plural known since c.1205, from Old English (and before Old French) bréc or breoc, which was already pl. of bróc "garment for the legs and trunk," from the Proto-Germanic root brokiz. Breeches is related to the Old Norse word brók, which shows up in the name of the Viking king Ragnar Lodbrok (originally Loðbrók), Ragnar "Hairy-breeches". The original Proto-Germanic word is related to another Proto-Germanic root, brekan, meaning approximately "broken" or "split off", which is related to modern English "break". It is also related, indirectly to the Latin word bracca, loaned from Celtic which in turn loaned it from Germanic; the Romans, who did not wear pants, referred to Germanic tribes as braccati, "trousers wearing" (actually then merely fabric wrapped around the legs.)
Like other words for similar garments (pants, knickers, shorts; using an obvious plural, as if to reflect it has two legs, as for most synonyms in English, is no longer common in other languages, e.g. the parallel modern Dutch broek), the word breeches has been applied to both outer garments and underwear.
At first it indicated a cloth worn as underwear by both men and women; by the Middle Ages breeches meant "drawers" or "underpants".
In the latter 16th century, breeches began to replace hose (while the German Hosen, also a plural, ousted Bruch) as the general English term for men's lower outer garments, a usage that remained standard until knee-length breeches were replaced for everyday wear by long pantaloons or trousers.
Semantics
The terms breeches or knee-breeches specifically designate the knee-length garments worn by men from the later 16th century to the early 19th century (and into the early 20th century as part of servants' livery).
- Spanish breeches, stiff, ungathered breeches popular from the 1630s until the 1650s.
- Petticoat breeches, very full, ungathered breeches popular from the 1650s until the early 1660s, giving the impression of a woman's petticoat.
- Rhinegraves, full, gathered breeches popular from the early 1660s until the mid 1670s, often worn with an overskirt over them.
- Fall front breeches, breeches with a panel or flap covering the front opening and fastened up with buttons at either corner.
- In the 18th and 19th centuries, the term breech-cloth or breech-clout was also used to describe the apron-like loincloths worn by some Native American peoples.
- In contemporary contexts, breeches are distinguished from other forms of pants or trousers as being shorter than ankle-length and form-fitting, as riding breeches.
- Breeches are also an item of protective clothing used in the martial art of Fencing.
Breech
The singular meanwhile survived in the metaphorical sense of the part of the body covered by breeches, i.e. posterior, buttocks; paradoxically, the alliterating expression 'bare breech' thus means without any inner or outer breeches.
This also led to the following:
- a (gun) breech is the part of a firearm behind the bore (known since 1575 in gunnery).
- breech birth in childbirthing (since 1673)
See also
- Clothing terminology
- Plus-fours
- The Breeches Bible, a Geneva-edited Bible of 1560, was so called on account of rendition of Gen. iii.7 (already in Wyclif) "They sewed figge leaues together, and made themselues breeches."
- Breeches Maker nickname
Sources and references
External links
- Petticoat Breeches and Rhinegraves Louis XIV and the nobleman on the left with petticoat breeches while the men in black and the nobleman on the right are wearing rhinegraves.
"Breeches"