Your big-boy pants

Jonathan Lighter wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM
Fri Jun 13 14:13:58 UTC 2014


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:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Charles C Doyle <cdoyle at UGA.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Your big-boy pants
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> X-OriginatorOrg: uga.edu
> X-Scanned-By: Digested by UGA Mail Gateway on 128.192.1.75
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
> X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by listserv.uga.edu
> id s5DE6RX0011747
>
>
> 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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



More information about the Ads-l mailing list