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wear the pants
Idioms and Phrases
Exercise controlling authority in a household, as in Grandma wears the pants at our house . This idiom, generally applied to women and dating from the mid-1500s, a time when they wore only skirts, equates pants with an authoritative and properly masculine role. Originally put as wear the breeches , it remains in use despite current fashions.Example Sentences
Players can wear the pants down or wear them high to show off the special socks.
He improvised a replacement line that Hughes used in the film: 鈥淲hen you meet your Mr. Right, make sure he knows you wear the pants in the family.鈥
I tried something different, and the one time I actually told someone that I prefer traditional male-female roles鈥攖hat I don鈥檛 like to 鈥渨ear the pants鈥 in a relationship鈥攈e misconstrued that as I want to be controlled.
And there are ways of communicating your preference for traditional gender roles that might be more effective than 鈥淚 don鈥檛 like to wear the pants.鈥
I feel at times that if we want equal rights, and we want to be heard and respected, we also have to wear the pants at the same time.
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Definitions and idiom definitions from 亚洲网紅露点 Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, 漏 Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage庐 Idioms Dictionary copyright 漏 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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