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  • "a man without breeches." It sounds funny, but it's probably an official military term because of how infrequently soldiers were supplied with clothing. They literally wore their clothes to rags, and sometimes had to walk around (and of course work) wearing only their shirts, which had long tails (down to about the knees) and were considered underwear. A man sans-culotte, in the parlance of the time, was "naked." (It did not mean what we think of as "naked.")

    October 9, 2008

  • Do you mean sans-culottes, c_b?

    October 9, 2008

  • No, Pro, I'm afraid I used the spelling from an 1816 dictionary. There are probably several entries on my list that use archaic or flat-out wrong spellings, but I tried to be faithful to what was in the book. :(

    Edit: though now that I think about it, the print was hard to read in some places. Perhaps this was one of them? I'll double-check the microfilm tomorrow. Thanks.

    October 9, 2008

  • Interesting. As I understood it, the word also referred to women at the time of the French Revolution, who were often obliged to go without knickers under their dresses.

    October 9, 2008

  • I double-checked, Pro, and it does look like what I thought was a lower-case E could be a C, so I read it wrong. Thanks for the correction!

    October 9, 2008

  • We need a tag for the sans-culotte word family!

    October 9, 2008

  • Oh, today's gonna be a rockin' Wordie day. I can feel it! :D

    October 9, 2008