Search the Dictionary

ment worn by men, covering the hips and thighs; smallclothes. His jacket was red, and his breeches were blue. Coleridge.

Padded breeches. [Obs.] Bombard phrase, inflated language; bombast. [Obs.] B. Jonson.

Breeches. [Obs.] Shak.

Breeches. [Obs.] Shenstone.

Breeches made of buckskin. I have alluded to his buckskin. Thackeray.

buoy, a large buoy on which a bell is mounted, to be rung by the motion of the waves. -- Breeches buoy. See under Breeches. -- Cable buoy, an empty cask employed to buoy up the cable in rocky anchorage. -- Can buoy, a hollow buoy made of sheet or boiler iron, usually conical or pear-shaped. -- Life buoy, a float in…

A part of male dress in front of the breeches, formerly made very conspicuous. Shak. Fosbroke.

ceive; to cheat; to play false; to lie; to wheedle; to cajole. For guineas in other men's breeches, Your gamesters will palm and will cog. Swift.

Trousers or breeches of corduroy. Corduroy road, a roadway formed of logs laid side by side across it, as in marshy places; -- so called from its rough or ribbed surface, resembling corduroy. [U.S.]

ous plants, with racemes of two-spurred or heart-shaped flowers, including the Dutchman's breeches, and the more showy Bleeding heart (D. spectabilis). [Corruptly written dielytra.]

A native, or one of the people, of Holland. Dutchman's breeches (Bot.), a perennial American herb (Dicentra cucullaria), with peculiar double-spurred flowers. See Illust. of Dicentra. -- Dutchman's laudanum (Bot.), a West Indian passion flower (Passiflora Murucuja); also, its fruit. -- Dutchman's pipe (Bot.), an Amer…

Loose hose or breeches; leather leg quards. The word is used loosely and often in a jocose sense.

Loose hose or breeches; galligaskins. [Obs.] Shak.

A sort of breeches. [Obs..] Chaucer.

Close-fitting trousers or breeches, as formerly worn, reaching to the knee. These men were bound in their coats, their hosen, and their hats, and their other garments. Dan. iii. 21. His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank. Shak.

Breeches; trousers. [Colloq. or Slang] Ld. Lytton.

f the knee, as in respect or courtesy. Give them title, knee, and approbation. Shak. Knee breeches. See under Breeches. -- Knee holly, Knee holm (Bot.), butcher's broom. -- Knee jerk (Physiol.) a jerk or kick produced by a blow or sudden strain upon the patellar tendon of the knee, which causes a sudden contraction o…

The name for a style of short breeches; smallclothes.

furcated garment for a man, covering the body from the waist downwards, and consisting of breeches and stockings in one.

A fellow without breeches; a ragged fellow; -- a name of reproach given in the first French revolution to the extreme republican party, who rejected breeches as an emblem peculiar to the upper classes or aristocracy, and adopted pantaloons.