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Breeches are an item of Clothing covering the body from the Waist down, with separate coverings for each Leg . The spelling britches reflects a common Pronunciation , and is generally used in casual speech to mean "pants". '''Breeks''' is a Scots or northern English spelling and pronunciation. ''See more at'' Trousers , Knickers . ETYMOLOGY Breeches is a double plural known since c.1205, from Old English (and before Old French) ''brec'' or ''breoc'', which was already pl. of ''broc'' "garment for the legs and trunk," from the Proto-Germanic root ''brokiz''. Like other words for similar garments (''pants'', ''knickers'', '' Shorts ''; using an obvious plural, as if to reflect it has two legs, as for most synonyms in English, is no longer common in other languages, e.g. the parallel modern Dutch ''broek''), the word ''breeches'' has been applied to both outer garments and Underwear . At first it indicated a cloth worn as underwear by both men and women; by the Middle Ages ''breeches'' meant "drawers" or "underpants". In the latter 16th century, ''breeches'' began to replace '' Hose '' (while the German ''Hosen'', also a plural, ousted ''Bruch'') as the general English term for men's lower outer garments, a usage that remained standard until knee-length breeches were replaced for everyday wear by long Pantaloons or trousers. SEMANTICS The terms ''breeches'' or ''knee-breeches'' specifically designate the knee-length garments worn by men from the later 16th Century to the early 19th Century (and into the early 20th century as part of servants' Livery ).
BREECH The singular meanwhile survived in the metaphorical sense of the part of the body covered by breeches, i.e. posterior, Buttock s; paradoxically, the alliterating expression 'bare breech' thus means without any inner or outer breeches. This also led to the following:
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