these underwear

[Wilson Gray]

On 11/15/05, sagehen <sagehen at westelcom.com> wrote:
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: sagehen <sagehen at WESTELCOM.COM>
> Subject: Re: these underwear
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> >in an ad from 10percent.com <http://10percent.com> (purveys of goods to
> lgb folk):
> >----
> >This is the sexiest way to wear your iPod - in your underwear! These
> >hot new underwear from Intimo Play are called the iBoxer. They come
> >equipped with a pocket that is designed to hold your iPod! Whether
> >you're a 30GB, 60GB, 1GB or a Nano, these underwear will hold your
> >package!
> >----
> >
> >(illustrated by cute young guy in nothing but an iBoxer, jamming to
> >his iPod.)
> >
> >yes, "these underwear", indeed "these underwear... are". a small
> >rash of asterisks appeared on my forehead.
> >
> >then i recalled a nice posting by mark liberman on Language Log:
> >
> > ML, 2/6/05: Syntactic and notional number:
> > http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001876.html
> >
> >in which cites of both "these underwear" and "this underpants" were
> >provided. sigh.
> >
> >arnold
> ~~~~~~~~~~
> The old L.L.Bean catalog used to use "this pant" in describing a pair of
> pants.
> I *think* they have since switched to "these pants", but a quick check of
> a
> recent catalog brought no instances of reference to a single pair.
> AM
>
> ~@:> ~@:> ~@:> ~@:>
>

"Pant" always seems to be the form of choice when referring to trousers for
women. It goes back to the '60's, at least. So, it's been annoying the hell
out of me for about forty years. If I ever got command over the English
language, that usage would be one of the first to go/
--
-Wilson Gray