British women using the word "panties"
 

As I've said ages ago on the forum before, I have a kink for women's underwear (not wearing it myself, but seeing it / talking about it) and this is why this subject interests me. It will not be of interest to everyone on the forum, so I apologise for that.

I'm 37 and live in England - in my life's experience, virtually all British women call their underwear "knickers" - and I find the word quite sexy. I've heard some use the words "pants" (which I don't like as it reminds me of men's underwear) or "underwear" (which I just think is a bit nondescript and uninteresting). But, the word "knickers" seems to be by far the most common.

In contrast it seems that "panties" is by far the most common term in the USA - I had an American girlfriend at one point who used the word "panties". But I get the impression that a lot of British women really don't like it, even though some British men seem to think it's sexier and so some British women in porn or erotica use it.

However, I once has a girlfriend who seemed to just use the word "panties" for her underwear. We dated when we were both graduate students, I was about 26-27 and she was a couple of years older. She was short and really quite curvy - large breasts that made men stop and look twice, and I thought a gorgeous body. She had quite a big sex drive.

The first time I heard her say it was because a pair of her knickers went missing from the university laundrette which we were forced to use (this was not something entirely unheard of). She remarked to me "They were my favourite silk panties!"

I knew the ones she meant - they were silky/satiny French knickers, dark purple with black lace trim. I really liked how they looked on her, and how it felt touching her pussy through the satin. Just the thought of her in them still turns me on.

I've never confessed in any detail about my underwear kink to a woman, so she didn't know about it - and sadly I didn't pursue the subject. I didn't really know if she called all her underwear "panties", or her word for what I would call French knickers was panties.

But I did hear her use the word at other times - regularly she would go without underwear under jeans, and a couple of times mentioned "I'm not wearing any panties." I once asked her why and she said "You don't realise how annoying it can be having a panty wedgie!"

I never knew if she used the word panties in front of me because she thought it was sexy to men - but I got the impression to her, her underwear was "her panties". I found this pretty sexy, simply because it is so unusual among British women.

I'd be interested if anyone else has met British women who non-ironically call their underwear their "panties".

In Australia the term is 'undies'.

Yes, very rare indeed. I actually find the word "knickers" a bit sexy in general.

But I'll still have good memories of that big bouncy girl talking about her panties.

Many years ago I went out for a couple of years (off and on) with a typically English girl who grew up in Devon and who only ever called them panties. Unlike you I am more into women who go without knickers, something she would never do, and I only remember her wearing standard M&S plain cotton ones.
A bit before that I was with another West country lass who spoke with a proper West country burr, and the memory of her telling me "When I wear suspenders I don't wear knickers" still causes a mild knob throb to this day, particularly as she rarely wore jeans or trousers, rarely had bare legs under her skirt and I only remember one occasion when she wore tights.
To return to the original point, in my experience the vast majority of British women call them knickers, which works for me.

For boys it is, but in my experience knickers or panties are far more common for women here.

I always love the variety of the different types of knickers different women wear. Some women are into colourful, or sexy stuff, or thongs... some just seem to stick with those standard M&S cotton ones, like the ones I think of as white cotton "frilly" knickers (frilly isn't really the right word, but kind of girly and plain).

It's also interesting how different women like or don't like to go without underwear. I've had two girlfriends who would even wear knickers under nightwear - one wore pyjamas, and one wore nighties, but they always wore knickers under them. One of those girlfriends even said to me once "I forgot to put any knickers on, and it felt weird!". It amused me how she said it, because how did she "forget" to put knickers on under her nightie?

And in contrast I had that girlfriend who would have much rather gone without knickers most of the time, if it was possible. The differences in women are sexy.

I've never heard any Aussie women my age (30s) refer to them as knickers or panties.

That's quite interesting - I believed that Australian women generally said "knickers", but then again I've never dated an Aussie girl, and I don't really know what is normal there.

Absolutely. I do fine "panties" a bit sexy from a British woman as I've said, because it's unusual.

But I will never get tired of hearing a woman talk about her "knickers". I used to have a girlfriend (one of the ones mentioned above) who would playfully say "What have you DONE with my knickers??" sometimes after sex, if I had passionately taken them off and she couldn't immediately find them. It's a sexy memory.

I have lived in both the UK and US. The word knickers is more of a turn on than panties. Panties is a diminutive of pants, i.e. trousers in the US, and men's underwear in the UK. Knickers are distinctly feminine and sexy. The word makes my groin tingle a little.

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.