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Dutchman's breeches

Dutchman's breeches noun: a plant of the species Dicentra cucullaria, native to eastern North America and the Columbia River basin.

dutchman's breeches: a plant of the species Dicentra cucullaria, native to eastern North America and the Columbia River...
Image: Fritzflohrreynolds, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

Dutchman's breeches pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) A plant of the species Dicentra cucullaria, native to eastern North America and the Columbia River basin.
  2. (plural, plural-only) A plant of the species Lamprocapnos spectabilis, formerly Dicentra spectabilis, similar to D. cucullaria, but red or pink.
  3. (colloquial, plural, plural-only) Something proverbially blue, used in phrases relating to a clear blue sky, as in "enough blue sky to make [or patch] a Dutchman's breeches", etc.
  4. (plural, plural-only) Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see Dutchman, -'s, breeches.
    • A Dutchman's breeches, in full taste, / Two contrasted extremes divide; / Buttons, like platters, at the waist, / And studs, like peas, along the side.1796, Samuel Bishop, “Epigram II. Plus, Minus.”, in The Poetical Works of the Rev. Samuel Bishop, A.M., volume 2, →OCLC, page 163
    • We have all heard it said of the Dutchman's breeches that they could be made to contain whatever objects could be forced through the pocket apertures, and the number of things that the Dutchman could stow away in the baggy recesses of his nether garments has always been a source of wonder to the...1915, Harold Donaldson Eberlein, The Architecture of Colonial America (Library of American civilization), →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 14

Synonyms of Dutchman's breeches

Origin of Dutchman's breeches

In the case of the plants, named because their flower petals resemble baggy pants worn by Dutch settlers to North America (compare slops, knickerbockers).

Questions about Dutchman's breeches

What does Dutchman's breeches mean?
Dutchman's breeches means a plant of the species Dicentra cucullaria, native to eastern North America and the Columbia River basin.
What part of speech is Dutchman's breeches?
Dutchman's breeches is a noun.

Words near Dutchman's breeches in the dictionary

  1. Dutchkin
  2. Dutchland
  3. Dutchlike
  4. Dutchly
  5. dutchman
  6. Dutchman's breeches
  7. Dutchman's laudanum
  8. Dutchman's laudanums
  9. Dutchman's log
  10. Dutchman's pipe
  11. Dutchman's pipes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Dutchman's breeches (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.

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