Every day I visit this BBS I seem to learn a new British English word. I had never heard something described as "pants" before... For those Americans (like me) who are interested...

In reply to:



“It’s pants”
An informal survey on the usage of the term 'pants'

Gareth (from Wales): "It means something's bad, something's rubbish. It's an exclamation of displeasure. It is not swearing..."

Amanda (from London): "It's a way of converting rude swearing to mild swearing."

Andrew (from Lancashire): "It's pants. It means 's***' or 'crap'. It is not swearing, but I wouldn't use it in polite company. It might be used as a substitute for 'that's bollocks'".

Lindsay (from Glasgow): "It means that's crap or rubbish. It is not swearing, but I wouldn't use it around older people."

Contributor Judith notes: "I have only heard 'pants' used by a young man at work. I used to work in <government department> where they are very politically correct in everything. The man was reprimanded for using the word 'f***'. He started to use 'pants'. I recently read in <newspaper> that pants meant 'rubbish'. In my teens my peers used to say knickers. We used it as a 'polite' way of saying 'f***'. So when my colleague used 'pants', I thought it was just a male gender version of 'knickers'.

The archives at deja indicate that the term 'pants' has been used on the television programmes "The Mary Whitehouse Experience" and "The Young Ones".



Taken from http://www.alt-usage-english.org/ucle/ucle9.html

A very on-topic post, I know...
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