wear the pants

1. 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.

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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.”

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I tried something different, and the one time I actually told someone that I prefer traditional male-female roles—that I don’t like to “wear the pants” in a relationship—he misconstrued that as I want to be controlled.

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And there are ways of communicating your preference for traditional gender roles that might be more effective than “I don’t like to wear the pants.”

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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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