these underwear

[sagehen]

>in an ad from 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

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