Word.ws English Dictionary

-pants

-pants suffix: used with adjectives ending in -y to form nicknames based on a negative quality of a person.

Suffix

-pants

  1. (derogatory, informal, usually) Used with adjectives ending in -y to form nicknames based on a negative quality of a person.
    • [book title]1986, Babette Cole, Princess Smartypants, Hamish Hamilton, →ISBN
    • We used to call her Miss Bossy Pants when she was a kid.1999, Eden Robinson, Monkey Beach: A Novel, Abacus, (cited from Houghton Mifflin/Mariner Books, 2002), p. 91

Examples of -pants in a sentence

  • bossypants, fancypants, smarty pants, greedy-pants, pouty pants
  • You had to pull one of your stupid disappearing tricks because you were being a pouty-pants.2005, Lauren Myracle, Rhyme with Witches, Amulet Books, →ISBN, page 21:

Origin of -pants

Extracted from fancypants.

Questions about -pants

What does -pants mean?
-pants means used with adjectives ending in -y to form nicknames based on a negative quality of a person.
How do you use -pants in a sentence?
bossypants, fancypants, smarty pants, greedy-pants, pouty pants
What part of speech is -pants?
-pants is a suffix.

Words near -pants in the dictionary

  1. -oyl
  2. -p
  3. -pagus
  4. -palooza
  5. -pamil
  6. -pants
  7. -parin
  8. -parinux
  9. -parous
  10. -partite
  11. -path

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: -pants (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “-pants.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/-pants. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.