Speaking English

By Celeste

You’re right to say that here in Britain, we call what you call “pantyhose,” we call “tights.” You ask as to what we call what you call “tights” and the rather confusing answer is “tights.” 

It’s up to the listener or reader to judge as to whether the speaker or writer is referring to what you would call pantyhose or what you would call tights. It will usually be pantyhose. What you call tights might sometimes be called “dance tights” to make it clear as to what is being referred to, but this would only occasionally be the case.

There are quite a lot of transatlantic differences in terminology, of course. Some which are found with regard to what we wear.

In Britain “pumps” are gym shoes, worn by both men and women. What you call “pumps” have traditionally been called “court shoes” in Britain, but that is a term falling out of use and shoes with heels are now usually simply referred to as “heels” or more specifically, the type of heel – kitten, high, stiletto, etc.   

“Hose” is a term rarely used in speech in Britain, but “hosiery” is sometimes used on signage in stores and in catalogues/catalogs.

Ladies’ stockings are held up by wearing a “suspender belt” not, as you would say, a “garter belt” with suspenders clipped onto the stocking. Garters are individual elasticated and usually highly decorative bands worn on one leg, ostensibly, to hold up the stocking but, actually, purely for decorative adornment. A very different type of garter used to be worn by men just below the knee to keep their socks up – a practice which finally died out here in the early 1950s.

Women and girls in Britain rarely refer to wearing “panties,” though may occasionally refer to them as “pants.” They are referred to as a “panty” in the context of “panty liners,” but otherwise, girls and women refer to them as “knickers.” Unlike in the USA, where Imen and boys are more likely to wear what you would call “knickers,” here in Britain the term “knickers” can have the same implicit erotic undertone as “panties” may have with you. Only in certain parts of northern England are men’s underpants still occasionally called “knickers” in common parlance.

So British women and girls are most likely to refer to their panties as knickers, but they are sold as “briefs,” a term the wearers may occasionally use.

As to underwear generally, I notice that women in the USA sometimes refer to ladies’ underwear as “lahngeray.” In Britain, it’s pronounced “lawngeree.” Both pronunciations are wrong – it’s “lahngeree.”

I find these differences fascinating. I hope you do, too.

Wearing Baulah

Charles Hawtrey femulating in the 1969 British film Carry On Again Doctor.