Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun plural Men's close-fitting knee breeches worn in the 1700s.
  • noun plural Chiefly British Small items of clothing, such as underclothes or handkerchiefs.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Knee-breeches, as distinguished from pantaloons and trousers; especially, the close-fitting knee-breeches of the eighteenth century. Also short clothes and smalls.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun plural A man's garment for the hips and thighs; breeches. See breeches.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun 18th century knee-breeches
  • noun obsolete (UK) underwear and other small items of clothing

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • He wore only a pair of the smallclothes he used for sleeping, and as he came to a sitting position, the muscles in his stomach tightened and his eyes lit up at the sight of food.

    WHEN THE HEAVENS FALL GILBERT MORRIS 2010

  • Lupa, wearing only a shift, was being pushed onto a bed by a skinny man, who wore only his smallclothes

    WHEN THE HEAVENS FALL GILBERT MORRIS 2010

  • She scooped up his buckskins (since he'd been stripped to his smallclothes in order to get water wrestled up from the stream for baths) and flung them at him.

    Tran Siberian Michael J. Solender 2010

  • He toweled himself dry in front of one of the large iron stoves that kept the soaking room warm against the evening chill, and then dressed in smallclothes that had been washed and dried, and leathers that had been brushed completely clean.

    Tran Siberian Michael J. Solender 2010

  • She went sprawling across it, and both Locke and Jean suddenly noticed that she wasn't wearing anything but her smallclothes.

    Archive 2008-07-01 2008

  • In the summer, a Comorri woman's smallclothes are small indeed.

    Lies of Locke Lamora--extended excerpt 2008

  • In the summer, a Comorri woman's smallclothes are small indeed.

    Archive 2008-07-01 2008

  • She went sprawling across it, and both Locke and Jean suddenly noticed that she wasn't wearing anything but her smallclothes.

    Lies of Locke Lamora--extended excerpt 2008

  • They wore leathern jackets, slashed and embroidered, leather smallclothes, large boots with embroidered tops, silver spurs, and caps of scarlet cloth, worked with somewhat tarnished gold thread, doubtless the gifts of some fair ones enamoured of the handsome physiognomies and reckless bearing of the hunters.

    The Englishwoman in America 2007

  • “Will you run over, once again, what the boy said?” asks Mr. Tulkinghorn, putting his hands into the pockets of his rusty smallclothes and leaning quietly back in his chair.

    Bleak House 2007

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