clothes on his back

[Thomas M. Paikeday]

This seems an idiomatic expression with meaning that is more than the sum of its parts. What is clearly meant is the "clothes he was wearing." If the poor fellow who went over Niagara Falls last week didn't have his pants on, AP would surely have reported it.
The expression is widely used in current English, witness Google (6,940 hits, 3,460 for "her back"). And it is not something new. The OED text (1992 disk) has three occurrences. The earliest is from 1584, Sir J. Bowes: "None of them had clothes on his back worth a robell."

Am I missing an entry in any of the major dictionaries?

TOM PAIKEDAY

www.paikeday.net