Talk:short shorts

RFV discussion: June–July 2021
Rfv-sense "men's briefs"

As User:BlackAdvisor notes, Etymology online includes the following:
 * "short pants," 1826, from short (adj.). Short-shorts is attested from 1946, originally men's briefs.

It seems to me that that might mean shorts originally referred to men's briefs, but it could also be read to mean that short-shorts meant briefs. Can we verify this independently? Cnilep (talk) 23:34, 22 June 2021 (UTC)
 * from 1945 refers to a type of women's swimsuit, from 1946 also refers to women's clothing. DTLHS (talk) 23:42, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Google won’t let me see the entire document, but from what I’ve seen in #26 it looks like it is referring to “women’s clothing” in that it is referring to actual clothing worn by actual women, but not necessarily a style of clothing *expressly* worn by women.
 * Either way, it is not referring to an undergarment. DTLHS (talk) 01:53, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
 * Cheers! By the way, #26 might be mis-dated: Worldcat says the series started in 1946, but links to only the 1964, 1965, and 1967 volumes on Google Books, and the thumbnail of the 1964 volume looks the same as #26. I suspect possibly faulty GBooks meta-data. But Yanks is certainly legit, as I can see the date on the front cover. Cnilep (talk) 02:39, 23 June 2021 (UTC)
 * : You can easily get an idea by searching within the text for years. I'm guessing 1967, because it quotes an opinion dated April 13, 1967 and searching for "1968" just turns up use as the end date for periods that start before 1968. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:52, 23 June 2021 (UTC)


 * I've found uses of short shorts clearly meaning "short trousers", often for women, back to 1935. The only source I've seen so far clearly meaning "briefs" (and I haven't been able to find it directly) is a quotation at short in the OED, from the Baltimore Sun in 1946:
 * ‘What are briefs,’ asked Senator Millikin... ‘Oh,’ said the senator. ‘Short shorts.’
 * It's not clear from that whether those briefs are men's underpants, short trousers, or something else. It's also not obvious whether this was idiosyncratic to . Cnilep (talk) 02:52, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

RFV-failed Kiwima (talk) 23:11, 23 July 2021 (UTC)