Is “Pantywaist” Vulgar, or Just an Old-Fashioned Insult?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Juanita. I’m calling from the Colony, Texas. How are you?

Great. How are you doing, Juanita?

Hey, Juanita. What’s up?

Good, thank you.

How can we help?

I have a word that I heard, and I haven’t heard it since. The word is panty waist. My grandfather used that one time when he was very angry, and I’m not sure if that’s a vulgar word or what type of word that is.

Who is he talking about?

He was just very angry, and he threw out the word panty waist as, I guess, an insult.

Yeah.

Oh, okay. That sounds about right.

And you’re wondering if it’s vulgar.

It’s interesting that you ask me this because just last week in my Facebook feed, somebody wrote out the term panty waist, but they spelled it W-A-S-T-E. And that sort of conjures some—

That’s disgusting.

No, that’s not the waist we’re talking about. We’re talking about the waist in the middle of your body, aren’t we?

Yes.

W-A-I-S-T-E.

Yes. Juanita, you ever spend any time around babies and put onesies on them?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, a while ago.

Okay, you’re quite familiar with that because a panty waist, spelled P-A-N-T-Y-W-A-I-S-T, is an old-fashioned kind of onesie. You would see that at the beginning of the 20th century. It’s sort of like, you know, they sometimes call them union suits, just like a one-piece.

But your shirt snaps to your pants, right?

Your shirt snaps to your pants.

At the waist, at the waistline.

Exactly. That’s why it’s called a panty waist. And so it was associated with babies, and panty waist became a term that was used to insult people, you know, to imply that they were… still needing their mama to dress them, those sort of things.

Yeah.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah.

And it popped up like right away, didn’t it? Like just a couple decades after the term first appears for the garment, the insult shows up pretty soon.

Right. See, that would make sense because he was born in the early 1900s.

Okay, there you go. And he wasn’t a vulgar guy, it sounds like, or isn’t.

No, that’s why I was sort of surprised because he never was one to swear or use profanities. So to hear him say that, it was like I couldn’t understand where that came from.

Yeah, it’s an insult, but it’s a safe one, if that makes sense.

No, no, it does. Unless you misunderstand.

There was this weird, you know, when I looked into this term, it’s weird. Like in 1934, 1935, we go from zero mentions of panty waste that don’t mean the garment, like none of the slang uses of it. And then suddenly in 1934, 1935, it pops up all over the place. It clearly had this vogue, this period of great popularity. And it shows up in the language of a lot of blue collar workers. I see it in a lot of union journals, like the journal for like steam fitters and that sort of oil workers, you know, where they’re talking about somebody being a panty waist because they haven’t given the union what they want. And it’s just really interesting to me to see a term kind of just pop up into the, or a new meaning just pop up.

That is interesting, yeah, because I have not heard it again from anybody, and I just couldn’t figure out really what that meant or where it came from.

Yeah, it’s not common these days. It’s mostly an affected word. If people use it, they’re kind of knowingly or ironically or winkingly using it.

Yeah, yeah, or really derisively, too, I think.

Yeah.

Pantywaist.

That’s very interesting.

Yeah.

Juanita, thank you so much for your call.

Thank you, and have a good day.

Take care. Bye-bye.

Thanks. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Has a word or phrase caught your ear and you want to talk about it? Give us a call, 877-929-9673, or send it to us in email. That address is words@waywordradio.org.