Origin of “Keep Your Pants On”

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, I’m Weldon Adams from Fort Worth, Texas.

Hi, Weldon. Thanks for calling. What can we help you with?

There’s a phrase that came to me the other day, and I realized that it didn’t make a lot of sense in context.

It’s a phrase that people use all the time.

You’re in a hurry, someone’s at the front door knocking on the door, and you’re trying to get there, and you might say, keep your pants on.

And it occurred to me, what is it about those situations that make us afraid someone is on the front porch sans pantalones?

I thought you were going to say that to doctors because they sometimes will say that.

Sometimes you’re not sure.

Do I need to keep my pants on or is this an operation that requires that I drop them?

I don’t know.

That’s a good question.

Yeah.

What good would it do?

Well, I’ve heard it also used when people are being impatient.

Oh, yeah.

Or even when they’re angry.

It’s like a full spectrum from impatient to angry, right?

Right, yeah.

Keep your pants on.

It’s not that big a deal.

We’ll figure this out, right?

Yeah, but it’s kind of one of those things you don’t stop and think about.

Then when you do, like Weldon did.

Well, there’s a bunch of these, Weldon.

There’s keep your shirt on.

There’s keep your clothes on.

There’s keep your hat on.

There’s keep your hair on, which is my favorite of the bunch.

We don’t wear wigs much anymore.

But I can imagine a time when, like, when you get angry, you start waving your powdered wig about to make your point.

Well, you’re fighting.

And, you know, that expression, wigs on the green.

Oh, yeah.

There we go.

Yeah.

Wigs on the green.

Two people fighting.

But all of these together are really about losing your composure.

If you take your shirt off or your pants off, it’s because you’re no longer composed.

You no longer look like a respectable person.

Not hardly.

Right? You’ve gone to some struggle here to make your point by stripping off your garments.

And this is connected possibly to these passionate moments in old books and even in the Bible.

There’s also a notion here, and you’ll find this often suggested for an origin of keep your shirt on anyway, that it’s what happens when two people are about to fight.

Just imagine a scenario, say, Daniel Boone times two backwoodsmen arguing over who gets the prize turkey at a turkey shoot, and they come to blows, but the first thing they do before they come to blows is they tear off their shirt because they don’t want to ruin their one shirt that they have to wear for the next six months, you know?

Now you take off your watch.

Yeah, they put your phone aside, the whole thing.

There’s an interesting term here that I use a lot because I picked this up from my British friends, but most Americans don’t use it, which is related to all of these.

It’s directly related to keep your shirt on, and that is to be shirty.

And that is to act like you might be the kind of person who’s about to be upset or angry and possibly take off your shirt in anger or frustration or impatience.

Yeah, I know the expression keep your shirt on is much older than keep your pants on.

Oh, yeah, it is.

So maybe that has something to do with it.

This did not go where I thought it was.

Where do you think it would go?

The only situation that I thought that this would make any sense, I was thinking maybe it would trace back to lines at the privy.

Oh, lines at the privy.

Oh, my.

That’s the only time the context makes any sense.

Yeah, you would be in a hurry then.

You would be, yeah.

Right?

Yeah, I can imagine the stagecoach stops somewhere in the mountains, and you’ve got 10 minutes for a stop, and there’s 15 people in front of you, and what are you going to do?

One last thing to say, Weldon.

There’s an older form of to keep your shirt on, which has kind of fallen out of fashion.

And this is to get your shirt out or to get someone else’s shirt out.

Like, he really gets my shirt out every time he comes late to the meetings.

Why can’t he be on time?

Oh, that makes sense.

So it’s kind of the putting it on another person rather than talking about yourself.

Well, taking it off another person.

I think I’m going to start using that.

Hey, Weldon, thanks a lot for calling.

Hey, thank you.

All right.

Have a good day.

Okay, take care.

Take care now.

Bye-bye.

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