Your big-boy pants

[Laurence Horn]

Well, for UK speakers "pants" can indeed be underpants (whence the tendency to translate our cispondian "pants" into their "trousers"), so someone over there could transish from diapers into them.  This is assuming no relation with Bob's Big Boy, which I do remember fondly for some reason.  (Special sauce, I think.)

LH

On Jun 13, 2014, at 10:13 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> I can't recall "strapping on" underpants, can you? Bis Boy sports two
> prominent red suspenders.
>
> Also, a ref. to underpants, would seem to suggest that diapers are, in some
> way, "little-person pants."
>
> Are diapers a subset of pants? (Panties, maybe.)
>
> JL
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 13, 2014 at 10:06 AM, Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at uga.edu> wrote:
>
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>> Subject:      Re: Your big-boy pants
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>>
>> Surely the reference is to successful toilet-training, the transition from
>> diapers to big-person underpants?
>>
>> --Charlie
>> ________________________________________
>>
>> Poster:       paul johnson
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> I've been hearing "big girl panties" used that way for a minimum of 10
>> years.
>>
>> On 6/13/2014 7:32 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>
>>> Philip Mudd, ex-CIA analyst, on CNN re Bergdahl:
>>>
>>> "As I said in the past, you gotta strap your big-boy pants on, 'cause
>> there
>>> ain't no good decisions!"
>>>
>>> SWAG: suggested by the checked pants of the Big Boy Restaurant Big Boy.
>>>
>>> And "You're a big boy now."
>>>
>>> 271,000 raw hits for "your big boy pants on."
>>>
>>> JL
>>
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>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
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