wear the pants

Idioms

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

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

She plans to wear the pants for just a season or two.

From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 14, 2025

Players can wear the pants down or wear them high to show off the special socks.

From Seattle Times • Apr. 28, 2023

He improvised a replacement line that Hughes used in the film: “When you meet your Mr. Right, make sure he knows you wear the pants in the family.”

From Washington Post • Dec. 14, 2022

“I’m loud, and I’m vulgar, and I wear the pants in the house because somebody’s got to,” Martha says with unrepressed bitterness to her husband George.

From Economist • Apr. 5, 2018

Mama said he was just putting his mark on everything so no one could say Enrique Mirabal didn’t wear the pants in his family.

From "In the Time of the Butterflies" by Julia Alvarez

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023