sweet in the pants adj. effeminate or homosexual. Editorial Note: This term is an extended variant of sweet with the same meaning. A few citations exist that seem to use sweet in the pants to mean “cool, good, sexy,” but the usage is uncertain. Thanks to Cowboy Sally for the tip. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Old. Elderly. Senior. Why are we so uncomfortable when we talk about reaching a certain point in life? An 82-year-old seeks a more positive term to describe how she feels about her age. And: a linguist helps solve a famous kidnapping case, using the...
Tracy in Beaufort, North Carolina, says her grandmother, aunts, and uncles used to try to calm down an upset or bossy person with Well, don’t get astorperious! You might debubiate! In the work of Zora Neale Hurston and in Harlem Renaissance...
Okay, now, I KNOW this is an old phrase. Hell, my grandparents used it to describe gay males.
Yeah, but can you show me old in-print citations for it? That’s one of the reasons this site exists: there are plenty of old terms that just never somehow made it into a dictionary. So we’re off to gather them as best we can and try and trace them a little ways back towards their origins. Unfortunately, remembering a term from a period isn’t really good enough (since memories are too fallible and also because it’s hard to differentiate between the people who honestly do remember and those that just say they do—and I believe the latter category outnumbers the former), except as a guide for knowing what period of print publications should be searched.
i thought this term refered to someone who was gifted in bed….