knee pants

American  

plural noun

1. knee-length pants, especially those formerly worn by boys considered too young to wear full-length trousers (often used as a term symbolizing youth).

   I haven't felt this way since I was in knee pants.

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Etymology

Origin of knee pants

First recorded in 1865–70

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

knee pants

With adolescence, he began to sprout like a weed, fought a squeaky voice and grew round-shouldered trying to carry conviction as a boy in blue knee pants.

From Time Magazine Archive

Attired in the white silk Buster Brown shirt and leather knee pants of his Master-of-the-Hunt suit, Hermann Goring last week entertained in the vast study of his Karinhall hunting lodge Karl von Wiegand.

From Time Magazine Archive

When in knee pants he pushed a pin through his mother's window shade to see a sun eclipse.

From Time Magazine Archive

At ten, a chunky, blond child in velvet knee pants, he played the Beethoven Concerto with the New York Symphony.

From Time Magazine Archive

Like other boys, he wore knee pants and heavy shoes with brass toe tips.

From "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith