Knickers
 

When I was growing the word knickers was considered rude.

That does make me laugh - it reminds me of sketches in The Two Ronnies where people would say "Oh knickers!" as an exclamation, and it would get a laugh. It's amusing because no-one I've ever heard in real life would say something like that, like "My electricity bill is due? Oh knickers!" :)

Oh yes - the context I like hearing the word in is that knickers are something that a woman has to keep hidden, that it's a bit immodest or naughty to let them be seen. Which is in a way a bit weird - as people said on another thread, many women are happy to be seen in bikinis on the beach, and a lot of bikini bottoms are more revealing than some of the knickers women wear.

But I remember two female co-workers once, young women in their early 20s, way back when I had a summer job as a student. They were talking about a night out together when they got drunk, clearly one had been doing some ridiculous drunk dancing where she kicked her legs up. One said to the other: "I saw your knickers mate!" laughing. The other woman seemed slightly embarrassed, but clearly was not too bothered and acted sassy: "Yeah... well- they matched my dress."

It was a little bit sexy to know that, even between two adult women, the act of accidentally showing their knickers is something they might remark on.

(P.S. Thanks all for the many replies on this topic. Didn't think I'd get many.)

I read this post a couple days ago and was mildly amused to know how different words affect us. I grew up with "panties" as definitively sexy and "knickers" a rarely heard term in British comedy and hardly sexy. I could go on but that is not the interesting part of my story. Let me get to the part where this saved me from a load of embarrassment.

So I go on Omegle for the first time tonight... Covid bored and just checking things out. I've never been on before and I didn't know it was a place where things got dirty. So I chat with a couple of people, a fat old guy, a pair of teenage guys, a dude who didn't speak English, then finally a pretty good looking girl comes on. It turns out she wants to have "some fun" and I'm thinking I hit the jackpot. Small talk is going well... She's in her last year of school, working in a coffee shop, from the UK (as I write I just realized this should have been my first clue, no one says "I'm from the UK". They say the specific country).

Anyway, I'm already a little surprised as to how well this is going, she's rubbing herself over her clothes and is begging to see what I'm packing. I'm wondering why anyone looks at porn if women like this are so easy to find. "Want to see my bra?" Yessssss! And the shirt came off! At this point I was not consciously suspicious but something in me knew this was too easy. Next came "Want to see my panties? Suddenly the new education from this post made me suspect something was up. Based in what i know she should say knickers, I flashback to when I waved at her at the start and she responded by typing "hi", her expressions didn't always match her tyoed words, and most notably she was ready to drop her clothes within minutes of meeting.

Anyway, it became immediately obvious that they had some way of putting up a recorded video as if it was a live cam. I don't know who was pulling the strings or what their motivation was but I would how have noticed if I hadn't recently learned that a UK hottie is unlikely to say panties.

Thanks for the education.

my wife always refers to them as nickers and i love that according to her she has her mummy nickers and her sexy nickers ,i love it even more when we are out and she tells me that she isnt wearing any nickers,
panties just doesnt have that naughty twang that nickers does

I love discussing this, because it's so interesting how your background, or where you grew up affects which words you find sexy. My American ex-GF used to find the word knickers hilarious and silly. She would say it in a mock-English accent: "knickaaaahs!"

But for me, growing up in England and hearing girls say things like "we just saw your knickers!" like it's naughty, made me unconsciously learn the word "knickers" as something feminine and taboo, and now I find it sexy. It became part of my sexual makeup.

In contrast I associated the word "panties" either with American drama, or with British porn where women try to be very sexy by talking about "my panties...". I didn't initially like the word that much.

But it was that one girlfriend who just seemed to use "panties" as a normal word for underwear that made me get turned on by the word. Hearing her Northern accent saying "They were my favourite silk panties" still gets me going.

Hello all,

my perception of panties or knickers is quite a bit different it seems from fellow Brits on this thread. Knickers are something young girls wear while panties are what women wear. Panties are sexy while, to me anyway, knickers are not and are much more utiliterian.

Alec

That's interesting. I do kind of get what you're saying, though it is not my experience - certainly I have never heard someone call a young girl's underwear "panties" (and I'd find it distasteful if they did) but in my experience, almost all British women (and a lot of men too) view "knickers" as an all-purpose word. You can have utiliterian knickers, but I've also heard women talk about wearing their "sexy knickers".

Actually this thread has reminded me I had a female French teacher when I was a teenager who once used the word "panties" in class, and raised some laughs. She was natively a French woman, teaching in England. I don't know where she learned English, but her English was fine - but she seemed not to know some English vernacular.

In this particular exercise we were supposed to learn the names and descriptions for various items of men's and women's clothing in French. So, to give us the answers, she read out the French words and then the English.

Now I've remembered it, I smile at her reading out the French words, and then saying "The white panties... and the purple and white panties..." She pronounced it in a cute French accent: "pant-eeeees".

Some of the girls giggled - because to them it was "knickers" and "panties" was unusual. Just shows, people do differ on this, even in Britain.