jeans
pronunciation
How to pronounce jeans in British English:
UK [dʒiːnz]
How to pronounce jeans in American English:
US [dʒiːnz]
Word Origin
- jeans
- jeans: [19] Jeans of the sort we would recognize today – close-fitting working trousers made of hard-wearing, typically blue cloth – emerged in America in the mid-19th century. But their antecedents have to be sought in a far distant place. The first known reference to trousers called jeans actually comes from mid-19thcentury England: ‘Septimus arrived flourishin’ his cambric, with his white jeans strapped under his chammy leather opera boots’, R S Surtees, Handley Cross 1843.Why the name jeans? Because they were made of jean, a sort of tough twilled cotton cloth. This was short for jean fustian, a term first introduced into English in the mid-16th century, in which the jean represented a modification of Janne, the Old French name of the Italian city of Genoa. So jean fustian was ‘cotton fabric from Genoa’, so named because that was where it was first made.
- jeans (n.)
- see jean.
Example
- 1. They all wore taut t-shirts and jeans or khakis .
- 2. Cuffed jeans and cargos are the worst offenders .
- 3. I put jeans on a hanger , too .
- 4. She wore jeans and a t-shirt .
- 5. Once I bleach my jeans by accident .