blouse [E19th] Women did not originally wear blouses. When it first appeared in English the word referred to the blue blouse traditionally worn by French workmen, although where the French got the word from is not known. In the course of the 19th century the word began to apply to various smocks and tunics worn by English farm labourers, and in 1870 came the first reference to a blouse ‘for a young lady’. Testimony to the fact that it is now fundamentally a female garment comes in a big girl’s blouse [M20th]. In Britain this is an insult for a man regarded as weak, cowardly, or oversensitive. Blouson [E19th] is closely related.