Plurale tantum and Sweaty Betty….

For some unfathomable reason, I have just received an email inviting me to buy Christmas presents at a shop called Sweaty Betty, which for the uninitiated is an outlet selling fashionable sports and fitness clothes for women – in some cases so beautifully designed that customers are inspired to take up certain sports simply for the opportunity to wear the clothes.

One item in particular caught my eye: the oddly named “unwind pant”.  Pants, of course, is an American word for what the British call trousers. Although it is still considered an Americanism, it is gaining ground in Britain for terms referring to sportswear. “Sweatpants” is far more common than the unpleasant-sounding “sweat trousers”. “Jogging pants” and “tracksuit pants”, meanwhile, are used about half as frequently as “jogging trousers” and “tracksuit trousers” – although “bottoms”, as in “jogging bottoms” and “tracksuit bottoms”, remains the most popular word by a wide margin.

But it was not the word “pant” in itself, nor the use of the verb “unwind” as an adjective which struck me – it was the use of the singular. I have never referred to a “pant” or a “trouser”, any more than I would use “a glass” to mean a pair of spectacles – it is always “pants” or “a pair of pants”. “Pants” is what is known as a plurale tantum – a word that only ever appears in the plural form – and “pant” is a bizarre and grammatically incorrect back-formation.