knickerbockers

Definition

Men's or boys' baggy knee breeches, of a type particularly popular in the early 20th century.

Etymology

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

Example Sentences

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