...no knickers










  1. How about "all mouth and (no) trousers" which I'm pretty sure is mostly confined to BrE. Referring, of course to a (usually male) person who is better at talking than at actual performance, or who makes groundless boasts.


  2. OK, but that's still leaves the man's appearance uncommented-upon.

  3. "If he were an ice-cream he'd lick himself" seems pretty dismissive.

    Meanwhile, are you crumpet?

  4. My stream-of-consciousness blogging was meant to be on the theme of comments on dress = comments on character, but by the time I got to the American phrases, it became more comments on dress=comments on dress.

    So, on the original theme, the_sybil's 'all mouth/no trousers' fits.

    'If he were an ice cream he'd lick himself' doesn't seem to fit with either theme, and doesn't seem to be as well known. Trying to find this phrase on the web (it doesn't seem to be as well-known as the others), I searched "ice cream" and "lick himself" and I found out of the first 100 hits:

    6 references to football managers

    1 to a Radio Lancashire DJ

    1 to Sting

    1 to a man in a shopping cent{re/er} in Ireland

    (Most others referred to dogs/cats licking themselves.)

    Searching "ice cream" and "lick herself", I found:

    1 ref to Big Brother contestant Makosi

    And lots of pornography--but that had nothing to do with the idiom.

    (The various no knickers phrases had hundreds of appropriate hits each.)

    I should note (since I didn't before) that All fur coat and no knickers doesn't only refer to women--I've seen it used to refer to buildings, the population of Jersey, nightclubs... So, while it has a gendered feel (since knickers are women's underwear), it's not just used of women...

  5. Knickers are women's underwear? Then why did my mother use the word to describe undergarments in general, inclusive of both sexes?

  6. When I asked Better Half (the only Englishman here) whether men's underwear can be knickers, he exclaimed, 'That's pants!' However, the OED sheds some light on why this might be what your mother called them:


    Was she referring to children's underpants?

  7. I understand that in Texas they say "all hat and no cattle." And as long as we're talking about "muffin tops," shall we allow our gaze to drift slightly southward and pause for a moment of discreet silence in contemplation of the unsightly "cameltoe"?

  8. I usually hear "mutton dressed as lamb" in contexts other than the appearance of women, such as cars or footballers. But then most of the circles I move in are reasonably feminist.

    As for muffins, the takeaway coffee bar chain AMT (which is ubiquitous on train station concourses) does blueberry and chocolate muffins with the muffin top.

  9. Oh and as for men getting off relatively unscathed, in Britain at least there's the issue of acting your class. Dressing in a proletarian fashion will get you called a chav, while dressing in an aristocratic manner will get you called a toff (or worse).

    Women do of course have it worse, though.

  10. Great post! Just this weekend I blogged about my muffin top, and how I am trying to love my post-baby muffin top, and I realized that, where you can get real muffins, the muffin top is the BEST part of the muffin.

    Oh - and I didn't know that mutton dressed as a lamb was about women. I use it for politicians, especially since the mayor of my parents' town is named Mutton (maybe today that will change) and is up for charges of assault on his family and employees I think. Though I guess that doesn't make him very well "dressed as a lamb."

    Great discussion, though!

  11. I know someone who calls muffin tops on women "gunts". Had to think about it for awhile but then realized he was combining two words... gut + something unmentionable. Wouldn't be surprised if it originated with Howard Stern.

  12. There are *some* terms of disparagement to do with men's appearance, however; "Dressed up like a pox-doctor's clerk" is one such, for a man who is dressed in a fancy but inappropriate fashion.

    It seems it could be either Brit or Oz in origin - see http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/11/messages/583.html

  13. What about metrosexual? Refers to a man who is overly concerned about his appearance. Slightly disparaging?

  14. Metrosexual is one of those words that is either derogatory, neutral or complimentary depending on its speaker and its context. It would be the highest compliment in the pages of the Independent on Sunday, for instance, but a vile slander in the Daily Mail.

  15. “Knickers” was derived from “knickerbockers” three-quarter length trousers once worn by small boys. According to my Concise Oxford Dictionary it is also a name for New Yorkers, being the descendents of Dutch Settlers. Strange how we seem to get our inner and outer wear mixed up. Knickers are still sometimes referred to as “drawers”, which can be a source of amusement, when somebody is deliberately “mis-understood” when referring to the storage container of an item of furniture.

  16. "size lords" - is this an American term? I love it.

  17. I'm not seeing that term here. It doesn't seem to be anyone's term--just creative language use.

  18. Muffin tops remind me of bingo wings. I suppose if life is cruel, or long.. the two go together.

  19. There's no such thing as a 'British' woman, accent, language. We have many! I despise the way Americans always generalise.

  20. @Anon: Pot, kettle, black, eh? But do note that there is such a thing as a British woman. There are, in fact, over 30 million such people, and they have the passports to prove it.

    (And while you're at it, mightn't you stick up for the Americans, who have many people, accents, languages as well? Generali{s/z}ations are what social sciences are based on.)

  21. my gran has always said-red hat no knickers i'm presuming it goes back to prostitutes wearing red hats ?

  22. lucy paine from UK20 June, 2010 10:10

    u could also have- dressed up like a dogs dinner referring to a woman's choice of dress -not in a flattering way ofcourse!

  23. another saying is 'Kippers for curtains' which sort of says the same thing. spend money on the curtains so the house looks good from the street but go hungry because you can't afford to by kippers to eat.

  24. A Lancashire expression, now rather old-fashioned, for a woman who gives herself airs above her station is "Queen Anne front, Mary Anne behind".

  25. This isn't related to dress exactly, but is "butterface" a BrE expression as well? I hear guys use it all the time here in CA. In case you haven't heard it, butterface means you like everything about a girl "but-her-face", i.e. a girl who has a nice body but is otherwise unattractive.

  26. Katie B

    Google Advanced Search allows you filter out everything but Pages from the UK. I tried this and found little to suggest that the word is common here — not yet, anyway.

    On the first page of results, there are links to a handful of pages with pictures for the viewer to rate as butterface or not. These could well be of US origin. Indeed, one linked page is of UK and Ireland responses to Am I a butterface?

    On the whole, the linked pages relate to a DJ Butterface or a band called Butterface, with a few picking up the two words butter face.

    I think it's safe to conclude that the word hasn't really made it here. I've never heard it, but then I'm the wrong generation.

  27. I've been called "lamb dressed as a mutton" working in an office wearing smart clothes at the age of 17 ;)

  28. You might know that Muffin top has been well assimilated into British English, such that we now have an less than complimentary statement......' The tramp stamp on the Muffin top of a Chav'.


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AmE = American English
BrE = British English
OED = Oxford English Dictionary (online)