knickers [L19th] A writer for the magazine Queen offered some good advice on warm underwear in 1882: ‘I recommend… flannel knickers in preference to flannel petticoat.’ At that time knickers, then with long legs, were becoming part of every woman’s wardrobe and part of the vocabulary. The word, originally meaning ‘short trousers’, comes from an abbreviation of knickerbockers [M19th]. The use of knickerbockers for loose-fitting breeches arose from the knee breeches worn by Dutch men in Cruikshank’s illustrations to Washington Irving’s History of New York (1809), which was supposedly by ‘Dietrich Knickerbocker’. By the 1970s somebody who was becoming upset and angry might be warned against getting their knickers in a twist.