ADS-L Digest - 10 Mar 2006 to 11 Mar 2006 (#2006-71)

[James Landau]

I have in front of me the reprint of the 1902 Sears Roebuck Catalogue (New
York: Bounty Books (Division of Crown Publishers, Inc.) 1969,no ISBN).
Pages 1109 through 1113 and half of page 1090 are devoted to "Ladies'
Waists".  They are NOT  T-shirts.  All have long sleeves and all button in
either the front or the back.  Most of them have what the catalogue calls
"a high standing collar"---is that what you mean by a "Peter Pan collar"?

The models shown wearing these garments all have 16 or 18 inch waists right
out of Gone With the Wind, which could easily be the reason the garment
acquired the name of "waist".  The catalogue says to order a waist by bust,
waist, and neck size, so apparently they are all the same length and the
extra material will get tucked into the woman's skirt.

A rather jarring statement: "Sizes from 32 to 42 inches around bust.  No
odd sizes, such as 33, 27 or 39 inches."  Apparently there has been a shift
in meaning of the phrase "odd size" since 1902.

Some of the waists were made of "flannelette" or "lawn"---two fabrics I
have never heard of.

There are no entries in the catalogue for "pantywaists", nor were there any
for "panties".  "Flannel underwear for Ladies and Misses" meant either
gowns or underskirts.  There is a page 961 (not in the reprint) which sells
"shirt waists" for men


> Date:    Sat, 11 Mar 2006 23:47:41 -0500
> From:    Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Eggcorn?
>
> A while ago, a friend of mine spoke somewhat as follows:
>
> "I don't what made that jerk think that I would possibly want
> to sleep with him. That would have been a total [pAntiweist]!"
>
> I asked her how that last word was spelled. She replied:
>
> "P-A-N-T-I-E W-A-S-T-E."
>
> I asked her what that meant. She replied that it meant that said
> jerk wasn't worth the effort involved in taking off one's undies.
>
> After a bit more conversation, it became clear that what she
> had in mind was "pantywaist," misconstrued and respelled to fit
> that misconstruction.
>
> For those too young to have worn a pantywaist, it was clothing
> for (male) toddlers. It consisted of a pair of short pants - the panties -
> worn over one's diaper and buttoned along its top edge to the bottom edge
> of a Peter Pan-collared shirt -  the waist - that itself buttoned up
> the front.
>
> From its use as clothing for babies comes its former(?) pejorative use as
> an insult for an adult male.
>
> FWIW, my Texas grandmother also used "waist" as the name for what we
> today would call a "T-shirt" and as a term for a certain kind of blouse.
>
> -Wilson Gray

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