To call knickers… knickers?!

[Elroq]

Ridiculous conversation with my friend today. We were out in town shopping and I said I wanted to go into a particular shop to buy some knickers. She gave a little laugh and said ‘Knickers? Are we eight?’ And I was like ‘Huh?’

Apparently she thinks that knickers are what kids call their underwear, whereas adults need to call them other things. I have literally never heard this theory, and was like ‘Well what do you call yours?!’ She tells me that she just says ‘pants’ or ‘underwear’, but to me ‘pants’ are what blokes wear or what Americans call trousers, and ‘underwear’ isn’t specific enough cos there are bras etc which are also underwear. Knickers is a perfectly fine word! She then suggested ‘panties’ which we both agreed made us want to vomit.

i’m pretty sure I made her argument look ridiculous, not least because the shop itself called them knickers. But please tell me that I’ve not been mis-labelling my smalls for the last 25 years??

Yeah, I think the ones in Enid Blyton's books are more like 'gym knickers', modesty shorts for under skirts and for indoor PE.

We had 'PE knickers' at my bog-standard comprehensive school in the 1980s/90s, they were basically very ugly athletics shorts of the kind track and field athletes wear, not like your actual knickers.

When we did PE at school, we wore short skirts and had to also wear navy knickers (they were always called knickers), which we wore on top of our ordinary knickers/pants.

It fascinates me how different we all are, and how different words have different connotations for different people.

Although Carry On films are indeed fairly awful, I have very fond memories of them from when I was a kid, and will regularly mutter 'Matron! Take them awaaaaay!' when anything I'm watching has a topless woman in it, so that's probably why I'm the sort of person who prefers the word 'knickers' to 'pants'!

Knickers sounds a bit dirtier and more frivolous to me, and that's kind of my default setting. 'Pants' to me is just brisk and wholesome, which is very much not my default setting. 'Pants' are something that would be packed in a rucksack for a hearty camping holiday... whereas 'knickers' are something I might accidentally have gone home without from a night out in my 20s 😁

It's only now that I'm really thinking about this that I've realised I probably separate people, in my own head, into 'knickers people' and 'pants people'. This has nothing to do with what they actually call their underwear, just what sort of person they are. For example, of my two dearest friends, I would say one is knickers and the other is pants.

@ItGhoul @LillyPJ oh yes. "Gym Knickers". Urrgh. Horrible things that you had to wear under your teeny tiny PE skirt.

You're at least the 4th poster from Scotland to say they use pants and no one has specifically said they're in Scotland and say knickers so I think it probably is regional. Pants is 100% a unisex and neutral term to me - if I ever had to use the word when speaking to a child at school, for example, I'd definitely say pants not knickers. I have two daughters and I'm not sure they even know the word knickers! Someone mentioned knickers is a very British word but I wonder if in fact it's a very English word.

@ItGhoul I think I grew up in the same era as you. Knickers do sound more frivolous, more intimate.

Apologies as I'm going on a bit of a tangent here. I once had a brief relationship with someone and when I ended it he asked if he could keep the knickers I was wearing. Wasn't braced for such a request and immediately wiped that idea out of his little head. But I remember him fondly all the same. I still wouldn't have called it perverted or anything, just the hygiene thing I suppose. I can't imagine a man would think of a woman's pants as being so personal or intimate as knickers.Sorry for my weird background story .

@Liz1tummypain Hahaha, this is brilliant! And yes, this is absolutely a knickers situation and not a pants one.

Reminds me of the old joke

What’s black and comes out of the ground shouting “knickers, knickers!”?
Crude oil.

I’ve referred to them as briefs, smalls or scanties on occasion.
But knickers is just fine imho.

Pants. Knickers and undies are twee and awful. Panties is a porn word.

Knickers are alive and well in Wales.

Has anyone else heard then called 'brookies'? My aunt and cousins used/use the term and I've never heard anyone else either use it or know what it means. Possibly some connection with Zimbabwe or S Africa? Has it got a Boer vibe or am I making that up?

Your friend is BVVVU for even suggesting the word 'panties'. 😂

Knickers in this house except dd2 who insists on knicker knackers to wind up dd1

In 1976 I moved up to secondary school and needed black knickers to wear under my PE skirt. Darling Mum took me to a haberdashery where the old woman behind the counter (actually probably younger than I am now) produced a pair of black silk knee-length knickers from one of those glass display cabinets... Mum said, very diplomatically, that they weren't quite what we were looking for and we left. Wish we'd bought them as an historical artefact but in those days money was tight.

Knickers is absolutely fine, but I also call them loons (pantaloons!).

Pants for man, woman or child. Knickers is low rent.