Knickerbockers were the below the knee, tightly cuffed pants that young boys wore in the early 1900's. You've probably seen them in pictures of the newsboys that hawked papers on street corners. I have a picture of my father at his bar mitzvah wearing tweed knickers and a peaked cap. He really looked kind of cute.
I looked it up on wikipedia and found the following information about the origin of the word: "The term came from the fictional author of Washington Irving's History of New York, (published 1809), Diedrich Knickerbocker, an old-fashioned Dutch New Yorker in Irving's satire of chatty and officious local history. In fact, Washington Irving had a real friend named Herman Knickerbocker, whose name he borrowed"
Maybe girls wore longish knickerbocker like panties when playing netball! Which reminds me of the awful thick navy blue knickers, complete with a pocket, we wore for gym! Oh dear!
It is with some hesitation and not a little trepidation that I, a British male, post a response on this topic to group which appears to be inhabited by American females. After a little research on the web I discovered that knickerbockers were baggy trousers tied just below the knee or at the ankle and were named after Diedrich Knickerbocker, the pseudonym of the author of Washington Irving's "History of New York". In Britain knickers are a female undergarment with two separate legs or legholes and cover part or all of the lower abdomen and buttocks and sometimes the thighs. The word "knickers" is used in Britain as a mild expression of exasperation and is also used in the phrase "get your knickers in a twist" meaning to be anxious or agitated. Nobody seems to know how the Knickerbocker Glory got its name! It is a very elaborate ice cream sundae that goes well beyond the banana split, itself a rich dessert. The knickerbocker glory was first described in the 1930s and contains ice cream, jelly, fruit and cream. Layers of these different sweet tastes are alternated in a tall glass and are topped with kinds of syrup, nuts and whipped cream. Though a British treat, the name "Knickerbocker" is distinctively American and associated with early New York state and city histories. Before they were called New York, the state and city were Nieuw Amsterdam. They were settled by the Dutch in the 1600s and 1700s. A knickerbocker was a descendant of the original settlers from Holland. The name comes from the fictional Diedrich Knickerbocker, who "wrote" Washington Irving's History of New York. Knickerbockers, or knickers, are also old-time knee-length men's pants that nowadays are seen on the rare golfer. How the name became connected to the sundae is not known.
I should also mention that "men's pants" in Britain refers to male underwear. And that suspenders in Britain are the equivalent of American garters. British males (like me) hold up a pair of trousers (not their pants) with a pair of braces. I shall now make a discreet withdrawal from this delicate topic...
Brace comes from an Old French word meaning "an arm" or "a pair of arms". Anything that was used like an arm came to be called a brace. But because brace originally mean "a pair of arms" brace could also be used to a mean "a pair". I'm not from the "huntin', shootin' 'n fishin'" fraternity but if you shoot two grouse you are said to have shot "a brace of grouse". Bruce
the term Knickerbockers is bit more than a 150 years old, dating back to the days of Peter Stuyvesant When the Dutcj man on Manhatan wore falring breeches now called Knickerbockers. The term is often credited to Washington Irwing , and some cresdit is due to him , it is owed to the British Caricaturist George Cruisnik, who in the 1850 illustrated English Edition of "A histoty of New York, written by Irwing under the Pseudonym "Dietrich Knickerbocker " the garmebts of alleged author, in this illustrations , and his fellow Dutch burgers led to the adoption of this term for knee breeches of any kind ,,
Horsefeathers & Other curious words by Cheles Earle Funk & Charles Earle Funk , JR , Perenial Library, 1986.
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