The "_-y pants" coinages are a kind of baby talk, related to "_-y pie" and "_-y poo" and so on, where by "baby talk" I mean the kind of language that mothers and other caregivers stereotypically use in addressing babies. In the end, I don't have a lot to add that's not obvious. I'll get back to you later if I can find anything useful. I've got a working hypothesis about the milieu this came out of, but I'm not sure that it's right. Note the parallel use of "smoothy pie" in this lyric. Obviously the "smarty pants" usage already existed in 1939. How'd you learn to say the things you say In the moonlight you really know what to do. Music by Walter Donaldson, Lyrics by Johnny MercerĪt the races your horses come in one-two The easiest part of this to answer is why things might have changed around 1940: So in keeping with my general practice, I'll post the rest of our Q&A. Dweck's deadline had intervened (" How Did Tina Fey’s Pants Get So Bossy?", Slate ). I sent a quick answer, and a day later, sent a bit more. Do you have any theories as to why people started adding "pants" to words, and why the practice rose so precipitously in the latter half of the 20th century? Often the terms are paired with an honorific for comedic effect (e.g. In the OED, it looks like "fancy pants" came first, followed by "smarty pants." Using Google's n-gram (an admittedly imperfect tool), it looks like the use of "fancy pants" and "smarty pants" really took off around the year 1940.
So we were curious how people started adding "pants" to different words. In the last few months there have been a couple of books out with "pants" in the title (Bossypants, Mr.
A couple of days ago, Jessica Dweck wrote me with a question:
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