“The pants that go with my new suit already have a hole in them.” That’s because in British English the word “pants” refers to underpants rather than the type of outwear this word refers to in American English. If you ask an English friend if they like your pants, you’re likely to get a very strange look as a response. In British English, however, the word “pants” carries a very different meaning. (If you want to get technical, trousers are also pants, but we’ll get to that later.) Jeans are pants, so are chinos and khakis and suit pants. When used in this way, pants can refer to any kind of pants. With that out of the way, let’s take a look at our three terms and explore the many ways they can be used.Īs described above, in American English “pants” refers to the type of clothing that has two legs, covering you from your waist to your ankles. Unless otherwise noted, then, whenever this article uses the word “pants” it refers to what the Oxford English Dictionary defines as “a two-legged outer garment … extending from the waist usually to the ankles.” Otherwise, things are going to get confusing. Or is it slacks?Īctually, we’re going to take a look at all three of these near-synonyms and figure out what, if anything, is the difference between slacks, pants and trousers.īefore we really examine the subtle differences in these three words, we need to briefly define the type of clothing we’re talking about. These two types of English can have very different meanings, even for the same word.Īll that leads us by a wildly unraveling thread to the topic of today’s article.Īnd that topic is… pants! Wait, no, I mean the topic is trousers. Not to mention the fact that English has many dialects, chief among them British English and American English.

One of the things that makes the English language so frustrating is… well, the same thing.Īnother double-edged sword is that language changes over time.ĭon’t let people tell you “correct” grammar hasn’t changed since 1825, because in actual fact dictionaries and grammars are defined by how people use the language–not the other way around. One of the things that makes the English language so fascinating is that there are words drawn from any number of other languages, current and historical alike.

What are slack