Brits do sometimes use the word “pants” to mean things other than underwear. “Sweat pants”, “jogging pants”, etc. could be, and are, used with no misunderstanding. If you went into a UK sports shop and asked to look at their “ski trousers” I can imagine that much smirking and tittering from the staff would ensue. Those things are called ski pants.
“Pant suit” (not “pants”) is also OK, I think.
And what do they call tank tops, which in Britain, or at least to this Brit, are sleeveless sweaters, typically knitted? (I could have said sleeveless jumpers, but “jumper” is another one that means different things.)
No, pants mean underpants.
If you went into a shop asking for sweat pants, jogging pants or ski pants in the UK, a lot of people would understand what you meant, but at the same time it would sound very affected for a British person to say that.
Ski trousers sounds more normal to me than ski pants, but most in the UK would call them ski bottoms.
I’m not so sure. “Sweat pants” sounds perfectly OK to me.
Here are a couple of pages from major UK ski wear sellers. They overwhelmingly use “pants” or, rather oddly, “pant”. The second one does use “ski trousers” on the page title but the item descriptions all say “pants”.
http://www.sportsdirect.com/skiing/ski-trousers-and-salopettes
Sweat pants: definitely OK.
Ski pants: definitely OK.
Jogging pants: definitely OK. Also quite common: jogging bottoms and tracksuit bottoms.
I’m British FWIW.
You said it; they call woolly vests or sleeveless jumpers “sweater vests”.
I’m highly unimpressed by the American habit of making a REALLY BIG DEAL about sweat. They never shut up about it, and have named several different items of clothing after it. I mean, sweater is bad enough, but then they also felt the need for sweatshirt, and, worst of all, sweatpants.
Yes, we get it, Americans are often large and sweaty. We get it, you can stop naming items of clothing after it now please.
I’m forced to conclude that, in the US, there are probably also sweatshoes and possibly even sweathats.
In Australia we call them tracky dacks. Which is a suitably derisive name for a frankly hideous but disturbingly ubiquitous item of clothing.
In the US, “suspenders” means straps which attach at the front and back of the waistline and pass over the shoulders, so as to prevent one’s pants (or trousers) from falling down. One might speak of a person who favors redundancy and certainty that things will work as “a belt-and-suspenders guy”, meaning that he wears both to be absolutely certain that his lower garments remain in place. If Brits use the word “suspenders” for a thing to hold up one’s socks, then what do they call the over-the-shoulder straps?
Braces. We use the term “belt and braces” in exactly the same way.
Originally the phrase was “Beltane braces”.
Beltane is an ancient Gaelic festival marking the start of summer, during which bonfires are lit. To prevent injury to bystanders, these bonfires are built inside metal braziers. To make doubly sure that the braziers do not fall over they are propped up with steel poles, or braces. Hence “Beltane braces”.
True story.
Oh, those are “Capri pants.” 
Maybe because lots of those things are made in sweatshops these days?
There is a (fairly recent, I think) fashionista habit of referring to the singular form of what is commonly known as a plural noun, e.g., something like “team a top with a capri pant” or “a smart trouser”. Bizarre - does this happen in the US as well?
Yep!
Here’s a patent leather lace-up/It’s a virtuoso shoe
I call foul on this, proof please!
Here on the Left Coast, the trousers you wear to work are called ‘slacks’.
The inside rim of a baseball cap (naturally) is called a sweatband, which has been justified in thousands and thousands of games on hot summer days, ever since the game was invented. So we have that one, too.
But it’s just a syllable. We don’t automatically think of locker rooms and stinky dripping rivulets of sweat whenever someone says sweatshirt. When used to mean a casual warm garment appropriate for informal settings as a jacket alternative, there’s absolutely no allusion to actual perspiration or body odor intended or understood. It’s as if the original meaning of the syllable has vanished when it appears in this context.
Sweatpants the are considerably more questionable as to their suitability away from running tracks and gyms, but even those disapproving of such attire do so only as a matter of style and taste, and not because they believe that they’ll perceive a draft of musty high school locker room sweat tainted air whenever a person in sweatpants walks by.
On the other hand, sweatwear, if I may coin a neoligism, did originate in the milieu of gyms and exercising, so the “sweat” allusion in the names of the garments was literal. And it still is for those who favor such attire when working out.
Speaking for myself, I could never work out in such gear, not even on a dare. Sure, that’s what I want when working out–thick and billowy fabric trapping all that warmth next to my skin.
Maybe the plural to singular transformation came from designer shop talk. We wear a pair of shoes, but the designer really needs to design one of them because the other one’s just a mirror image of the first shoe.
A pant (trouser) or a jean is a particular style or cut offered by the manufacturer, pants (trousers) and jeans are what you have in your wardrobe (never mind the different meanings of the word wardrobe, since it doesn’t matter in this case). Trousers aren’t quite like shoes since it’s just one garment, but the parallel can still be drawn.
I don’t use the singular terms myself but I can see how in designer circles the usage has semantic validity, rather than being just an affectation.
I disagree. It’s a word that’s always irritated me. “Sweat” just sounds wrong for clothing-- even though I’ve been using the word all my life for sweatshirts and sweatpants. It still brings up connotations of stinky locker rooms.
But on the other hand, the word “sweater” doesn’t both me it all. I dunno why.It brings up connotations of a nice, pretty woolen garment that keeps you warm on a chilly night.
(But I do prefer what them Brits call it: a cardigan. That sounds classier.)
Just for the sake of completeness… If your sweater buttons up at the front then it’s a cardigan (or “cardy”), if it’s got a flat front, then it’s a jumper.