Quote:
Originally Posted by imbiable
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
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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.