gallery2_lrg.jpgWhere did the word “shorts” come from? The French word for an “outer garment for the lower part of the body, having individual leg portions that reach typically to the ankle” is pantalon, which comes from the Italian “pantalone,” after San Pantalone, or Saint Pantaleon (died A.D. 303), Roman physician and martyr. The English circa 1580-90 took the French word and coined pantaloons. That’s a long word to say, so in the 19th century (1830-40), Americans shortened the word to just pants*. Then, with increased global warming and decreased modesty, the amount of cloth in trousers was reduced to the knee and above, thus giving us “short pants,” which was used until we tired of two words for a single garment and cut it down to the modern shorts.

Says Dictionary.com, “the abbreviation of pantaloons to pants met with some resistance at first; it was considered vulgar and, as Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, “a word not made for gentlemen, but ‘gents.’” First found in the writings of Edgar Allan Poe in 1840, pants has replaced the “gentleman’s word” in English and has lost all obvious connection to Saint Pantaleon.”

* Pants is considered by many to be an inherently funny word.