‘Knickers’ in the UK are women’s underwear in most prevailing contexts. Getting your ‘knickers in a twist’ is, I believe directly equivalent to the US ‘panties in a bunch’ - and it does have a somewhat gendered angle; that is:
- If you talk about a woman getting her knickers in a twist, there is a suggestion of female hysteria.
- If you use the same term about a man, there is a suggestion that he’s behaving like a hysterical woman (or, indirectly, that he’s wearing women’s underwear, which is not ‘manly’).
I just want to address the UK side of this, since in this thread there seems to be a tendency to equate it exactly to the state of play in Australia. It’s not the same in the UK, as far as I can tell.
There are UK subcultures (mostly young, male, blue collar I think) where it’s probably directly equivalent to AU usage. but I believe this is a much smaller subset of the whole culture and so the word is, in general, rather more likely to be found offensive here in the UK.
This thread has drifted into a discussion of words rather than a discussion of rules and moderation. Those who wish to continue the word discussion, feel free to do so in a more appropriate forum.
This is closed.