Word.ws English Dictionary

knee-breeches

UK/ˌniːˈbɹɪtʃɪz/US/ˌniˈbɹɪtʃəz/

knee-breeches noun: breeches reaching down to or just below the knee.

Noun

knee-breeches pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) Breeches reaching down to or just below the knee.
    • This Eben did every day till he grew out of knee-breeches into long corduroy trousers.1918, Caradoc Evans, “The Talent Thou Gavest”, in My People: Stories of the Peasantry of West Wales, New York: Boni and Liveright, page 68
    • Practically everyone in the army wore corduroy knee-breeches, but there the uniformity ended.1938 April, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter I, in Homage to Catalonia, London: Secker & Warburg, →OCLC

Forms of knee-breeches

alternative formknee breeches

Origin of knee-breeches

From knee + breeches.

Words that rhyme with knee-breeches

Questions about knee-breeches

What does knee-breeches mean?
Knee-breeches means breeches reaching down to or just below the knee.
What part of speech is knee-breeches?
Knee-breeches is a noun.
How do you pronounce knee-breeches?
Knee-breeches is pronounced /ˌniːˈbɹɪtʃɪz/ (UK).

Words near knee-breeches in the dictionary

  1. knee'd
  2. knee-ache
  3. knee-aches
  4. knee-band
  5. knee-bands
  6. knee-breeches
  7. knee-buckler
  8. knee-bucklers
  9. knee-cap
  10. knee-capping
  11. knee-cappings

Source and license

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