Unmentionables

Language always reflects the society around it, and thus we find that the Victorian moral values of the 19th century were also reflected in the language. The Victorian era saw a number of euphemisms enter the language as prissiness forbade people to utter certain words. For instance, 'roach' began to mean 'cockroach' in the 19th century; as one of the OED citations (from 1837) says: "‘Cock-roaches’ in the United States‥are always called ‘roaches’ by the fair sex, for the sake of euphony".

 

Even the word 'trousers' was too shocking to say, so a number of different euphemisms for these garments were coined in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Apart from unmentionables, there's also: inexpressibles, ineffables, inexplicables, indescribables, etceteras, indispensables, unimaginables, innominables, unwhisperables, unutterables, unprintables and never-mention-'ems, plus the rhyming slang round-me-houses, and many other euphemisms in the Oxford English Dictionary.

 

Trousers seem to inspire people to create new words. When I was growing up in Liverpool, we called them kecks. The OED says that word most likely comes from 'kick'; kickseys, in fact, was another Victorian synonym for trousers.

 

It was once said by some that the word 'trousers' had its origin in the French trousse, truss, but the OED thinks that the likeliest explanation is that it comes from the Irish and Scottish Gaelic triubhas (where bh is pronounced as a v sound).

Comments

[Jemmy Hope]

'Strides' is another slang term for trousers, though I haven't heard it for some time.
I have the impression that kecks means trousers in Lancashire, and underpants in Yorkshire.
Personally I like the pre-Victorian term for undergarments - 'small clothes'.

[Virtual Linguist]

Yes, Jemmy, thanks. Strides came later than unmentionables and most of the other words.Not sure about kecks, but I'll ask my Yorkshire friends. Smalls for undergarments is still in reasonably common use, I'd say, especially among the older generation.
Thanks, as always, for your informative comment.

[MWarhol]

Interesting to find that trousers were called "kecks". From David Maurer's book "Whiz Mob: A Correlation of the Technical Argot of Pickpockets with Their Behavior Pattern" I learned that pockets in trousers were called "kicks" by pickpockets. So a back pocket was a "prat kick", a side pocket was a "side kick", and so on.

[Virtual Linguist]

Thanks for that interesting info. Yes, kick, prat-kick and side-kick are all in the OED with those meanings, and there is a citation from Maurer (although not from the book you mention). It was all new for me. Thanks for reading and for your comment.