trouser

English

Etymology

Back-formation from trousers.^[1]

Pronunciation

• (British) IPA^(key): /ˈtɹaʊzə/
• (US) enPR: trouʹzər, IPA^(key): /ˈtɹaʊzɚ/

• Audio:

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aʊzə(ɹ)

Noun

A pair of trousers.

trouser (plural trousers)

1. (used attributively as a modifier) Of or relating to trousers.

   trouser leg

2. (in clothing retail and fashion) A pair of trousers.

   And this is our linen trouser, sir.

Usage notes

• Outside the clothing retail and fashion industries, the use of the noun trouser to refer to a pair of trousers is rare.

Derived terms

• betrousered
• detrouser
• in the trouser department
• one-eyed trouser snake
• trouser cough
• trouser department
• trousered
• trousered class
• trouserette
• trouserian
• trousering
• trouser leg
• trouserless
• trouserlessness
• trouserlike
• trouser monkey
• trouser pants
• trouser pocket
• trouser press
• trouser role
• trouser snake
• trouser suit
• trouser tent
• untrousered

 

Translations

of or relating to trousers

Finnish: housu- (fi)

pair of trousers — see trousers

Verb

trouser (third-person singular simple present trousers, present participle trousering, simple past and past participle trousered)

1. (transitive, British, Ireland, informal) To put (money) into one's trouser pocket; to pocket.
2. (transitive, British, Ireland, informal) To secretively steal (an item or money) for personal use.
   • 1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XIX, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins, →OCLC:

     Your aunt told him to pack Upjohn's bags, and the first thing he saw when he smacked into it was the speech. He trousered it and brought it along to me.

   • 2021 September 7, “Greedy pub worker’s assets targeted after he’s convicted of £40,000 embezzlement: Graham Barr trousered over £35,000 while working at the Canny Man in Lugton”, in Daily Record:

     Barr, 34, trousered the money from the pub in Lugton, Ayrshire, between January 2016 and February 2018.

3. (transitive, British, Ireland, informal) To take and keep (something, especially money, that is not one's own); to pocket.
   • 2010, Richard Littlejohn, Littlejohn’s Britain, page 348:

     Politicians know how to look after themselves. Derry Irvine, Blair’s old boss, trousered a pension fund worth £2.3 million after just five years as Lord Chancellor - all courtesy of the tax payer.

   • 2021 July 14, “Towns trouser cash as billions earmarked for ‘levelling up’ in U.K.”, in The Guardian:
   • 2022 March 10, “Shell boss earns £6.3million in a year as households and motorists face cost of living crisis”, in Mirror:

     Andy Prendergast, national secretary of the GMB union, said: “To see the boss of Shell trouser more than £6million while bills are crippling families and countries scrabble around trying to ditch Russian gas is abhorrent.

   • 2022 June 9, “CMC Market boss and House of Lords member Peter Cruddas set for bumper dividend as trading platform’s profits and revenue slide”, in thisismoney.co.uk:

     The founder and boss of CMC Markets is set to trouser £20million via the company’s dividend payments, even as the group’s profits and revenue fall.

   • 2022 July 4, Feargal Sharkey, “Our taps could run dry and greedy bosses should be prosecuted, writes FEARGAL SHARKEY”, in Daily Mail:

     Worse still, the driving motivation for all too many of the bosses of water companies appears to be not to improve the environment or to secure London’s water supply but rather to trouser obscene salaries and bonuses

   • 2022 July 17, “LUCKY NUMBERS Euromillions - £191million jackpot rolls over AGAIN with whopping cash prize up for grabs on Tuesday”, in The Sun:

     The whopping sum will now be up for grabs on Tuesday when punters will have another chance to trouser the lifechanging amount.

   • 2022 November 7, Marc Fennell, Rosanna Ryan, “When England invaded Scotland, the Stone of Destiny was stolen. Centuries later, four Scots stole it back”, in Australian Broadcasting C RN:

     A small piece of the Stone of Destiny broke off during the operation at Westminster Abbey — and Ian's son, Jamie Hamilton, still has it. / "My father had the presence of mind to trouser it and got it set in a brooch, and gave the brooch to my mother," Jamie says.

   • 2023 April 19, Christian Wolmar, “We need a cross-party transport policy that supports net zero”, in RAIL, number 981, page 34:

     As an example, in the final three months of 2022 (usually a fallow period for airlines), Ryanair trousered a comfortable £222 million in profits - essentially £2m per day.

Translations

to pocket — see pocket

to legally remove

Finnish: pistää taskuihinsa

to secretively steal

Finnish: pistää liiveihinsä

References

• “trouser”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.

1. “trouser”, in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition, Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016, →ISBN.

Anagrams

• retours, rotures, rouster, routers, tourers