To you, is the word *underwear *a singular noun that evokes a specific item or a collective noun used to describe anything worn under outer garments?
I grew up using it as a collective. Underwear is underpants, undershirts, bras, girdles, slips, camisoles, garters - items of clothing meant to be concealed by other clothing. Yet some people seem to use it to refer to underbritches worn by men, while the female equivalent is panty.
Am I alone? Is this a regionalism or just a personal -ism? What say ye?
I grew up in the Baltimore area in the 60s if that has any bearing.
It can be either, but if you say “I lost my underwear on the bus yesterday” I will understand that as losing one’s panties or boxers. Bras are also underwear. T-shirts are not, because men wear them as outerwear, too.
Yes, underwear means everything, bras panties, stockings, what have you. What bothers me is people saying “underpants” for panties and or underwear. I just cannot stand the word “underpants”.
Both. Sorry. It can refer to the underpants worn by women, men, boys or girls, a singular item (“Stop running around naked and put on your underwear! Grandma will be here any minute!”) or a stack of 'em (“Please take the underwear out of the dryer and put it away in a drawer; don’t just throw it at the foot of your bed and leave it there for two weeks, fer chrissakes!”). It can also refer to the entire genre of modern underclothings (“The bras and panties go in the underwear drawer.”), but historical underclothings aren’t usually called underwear, but their specific names, (“That corset is Edwardian and that farthingale is Elizabethan; you look like a chess piece, moron!”)
Camisoles and t-shirts I don’t usually think of as underwear. I might call a t-shirt an undershirt if it was actively being worn under a dress shirt, but a visible t-shirt is just a layered tee.
Basically, if grandma can see it without a layer over it, it’s not really underwear. If it *must *be covered and freshly changed or the ambulance driver will blame your mother for not raising you right, it’s underwear.
I feel the same about the word “panties” tho I don’t know why I hate the word so.
I my house, I use the generic term “unders” for any of the white garments we wear beneath our outer garments.
As a kid, my mom called underpants “dribbies” which is a shortening of “dribby drawers” which is a nonsense adjective with the word drawers.
I don’t know - maybe Mom drank…
I also vote for both. Like “sheep” it is a singular or a plural noun based on usage.
I don’t think “dribby drawers” can be blamed on Mother’s Little Helper…she probably just never stopped using the term after you and your sibs were out of diapers. Mom’s use of dribbly (leaking) drawers (underwear) makes perfect sense if you’re old enough to have had the old-style cloth diapers inflicted upon you.
It’s a standard term over here.