Now Mr. Wu, he’s got a naughty eye that flickers,
You ought to see it wobble when he’s ironing ladies’ blouses.

I also think of an Alan Bennett sketch in which he’s trying to send a telegram including “Norwich”… carefully explaining that it stands for (k)nickers off ready when I come home”… and then “yes, I know that knickers doesn’t start with an N…” A major delight of the sketch is hearing Alan Bennett, with his rather prissy voice, repeating the word “knickers”… a word that would seem more at home in a Carry On film. Were Alan Bennett a woman, I’d think of his voice as suggesting a maiden aunt… but I can’t identify of a sufficiently close male equivalent.

Yeah, right…

Heh, well they are all from you, Miranda and me…

Well, ‘knicker’ is itself a diminutive, as I mentioned in the post. I guess they all just keep getting smaller and smaller.

-ie should be under Doll, I think :)

Yes, dungarees have the look of being useful to painters, but I wonder how well they protect shirts from paint splashes. The shirt sleeves (at least) would surely be entirely unprotected. Perhaps I should research this by digging out the old top I’ve worn for painting and decorating, look at the distribution of paint splashes, and see whether they’re concentrated in the bib area.

It’s not clear whether Evadne Price intended a reference to Dick Turpin… but Jane Turpin is a lawless character. Dick Turpin is certainly a very familiar name to English people, but I have a feeling that Evadne Price may have been an Australian by birth. Would that make a difference?

The stories are very amoral. And the message the stories give to readers is that girls can be strong, independently minded and assertive. It would be astonishing to discover that Evadne Price wasn’t quite a radical feminist. I know little of her life, but have the idea that she drove an ambulance during the First World War.

The “ies” of “panties” has the air of a diminutive. That may be a big part of why “pants” (as a word) feels more comfortable.

We’ve already considered diminutives several times, haven’t we? And women choosing to end their names with an “ie”… although I don’t remember under which word you subsumed that, Hodge.

I suppose dungarees have are extended versions of jeans, which were first worn as a kind of appropriation of American work-wear; and, in fact, dungarees are presumably themselves originally work-wear of an ‘overalls’ nature…? In that case, they would serve a practical purpose to prevent paint getting all over your shirt, bib-style, which is taken by extension to mean ‘comfort-focused workwear’, when in fact it means ‘useful for painters’. Or something.

It’s funny how lots of people have an aversion to the word, too. Cf. ‘panties’, which I’ve always felt to be the most hideous word ever, perhaps because of the way it feels a bit patronising, and, by extension, extremely Wrong. I don’t know many people who happily use the word ‘knickers’ either, although this may just be because most conversations I have don’t contain extended reference to underwear! On the other hand, a lot of women I know talk about ‘pants’, sans ‘-ies’ which has a sort of unassuming and gender-neutral feel to it, but then, of course, means something quite different in America…