knickerbockers

From the short breeches worn by Diedrich Knickerbocker in George Cruikshank's illustrations of Washington Irving's 1809 A History of New York.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈnɪkəbɒkəz/

• Audio (Southern England)

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• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈnɪkɚbɑkɚz/, enPR: nĭkʹər-bŏk-ərz

knickerbockers pl (plural only)

1. Men's or boys' baggy knee breeches, of a type particularly popular in the early 20th century.
   • 1890, Jacob A[ugust] Riis, “The Sweaters of Jewtown”, in How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, page 125:

     Five men and a woman, two young girls, […], and a boy […] are at the machines sewing knickerbockers, “knee-pants” in the Ludlow Street dialect.

   • 1907, Ronald M. Burrows, The Discoveries In Crete, page 37:

     […] and some gems that represent the tasseled garment that the leader wears show it in a distinctly religious connection. On a gem from Zakro it [the sistrum] is being being carried by a man who does not wear the loin-cloth, but a baggy kind of knickerbockers like the Moslem trousers of to-day.

   • a. 1954 (date written), Dylan Thomas, “The Holy Six”, in Adventures in the Skin Trade (A New Directions Paperbook; no. 183), New York, N.Y.: New Directions Publishing Corporation, published 1969, →ISBN, page 129:

     And it was early morning, and the world was moist, when the crystal-gazer's husband, a freak in knickerbockers with an open coppish and a sabbath gamp, came over the stones outside his house to meet the holy travellers.

• knickerbocker
• knickers (UK, New Zealand)

• knickerbocker m sg

Unadapted borrowing from English knickerbockers.

• IPA^(key): /(k)ni.kœʁ.bɔ.kœʁ/
• Rhymes: -œʁ

knickerbockers m pl (plural only)

1. knickerbockers

   Synonym: (clipping) knickers

   Il est venu en knickerbockers.

   He came in knickerbockers.

• The singular form knickerbocker, unlike the plural form, may only refer to one pair of trousers.

• “knickerbockers”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.