Dictionary

pantalettes en · NOUN

Pronunciation

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Etymology

From pantal(oon) + -ette + -s.

Meanings

1. (historical, plural, plural-normally) A form of long underpants with a frill at the bottom of each leg.
   • A couple of shifts, some clean pantalettes, stockings, a spare pair of shoes: a suitcase is soon full. 2002, Michel Faber, chapter 34, in The Crimson Petal and the White, Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt, →ISBN, part 5 (The World at Large), page 805:
   • In the second row of the cavalcade were Francie, Fanny's god-daughter, now thirteen years old and already elegant in long frilled pantalettes, tartan skirts, and a leghorn hat with streamers, […] 1929, M. Barnard Eldershaw, A House Is Built, Chapter IX, Section iii:
   • A mad world this, my friends, a world in its lunes, petty and other; in lunes other than petty now for some time; in petty-lunes, pettilettes, or pantalettes, about these six weeks, ever since when this rampant androgynous Bloomerism first came over from Yankee land. 1851, Thomas Snarlyle, “Bloomerism: A Latter-Day Fragment”, in Punch, page 217:
2. (historical, plural, plural-normally) A removable kind of ruffle worn at the feet of women's drawers.

Forms