"A nice pair of pants would go well with that jacket, but there's a loose thread on it...hang on. I saw a pair of scissors around here."
"I'm gonna pose in my underwears!" - Filippo Giove of " Jerseylicious"
It's been driving me nuts since Eisenhower was in the White House. Why do we say we wear "a pair" of pants when we only say we wear "a shirt"? Why is it "a pair" of pliers when it's only one hammer? If you have some leftover styrofoam and wish to send it to your friend in Schenectady, how do you pack it up? In more styrofoam?
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| Ever notice how much 16th century soldiers looked like 21st century hipsters? |
I can't handle that last one, but I finally look up the pants issue. We say "pants" as short for "pantaloons." Way back when when men got rid of the loincloth and started dressing a little more nicely for work, they wore pantaloons, which were actually in two pieces. You put one on one leg, tied it around the waist, and then did the same to the other leg. Some brilliant person decided on the unipant, and we still wear them today, although I would pay a fortune to hear Donald Trump say he is "wearing pantaloons."The deal with "a pair of scissors" is, each blade is actually a knife, but you put them together and you get the cleaving going on that you couldn't achieve with a knife in each hand. Same with pliers...take them apart and see how much you can get done, pulling nails or whatever, but a pair makes them work.
It's sort of like peanut butter and jelly, cheese and pepperoni, Heckle and Jeckle. When the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, we say it's working great, and we move on.
Next up: If you sue a parsley farmer and win, will they garnish his wages?
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