Word.ws English Dictionary

knickerbockers

/ˈnɪkəbɒkəz/US/ˈnɪkɚbɑkɚz/

knickerbockers noun: men's or boys' baggy knee breeches, of a type particularly popular in the early 20th century.

knickerbockers: men's or boys' baggy knee breeches, of a type particularly popular in the early 20th century
Image: Lewis Hine, 1874-1940, photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

knickerbockers pl (plural only, attributive knickerbocker)

  1. (plural, plural-only) Men's or boys' baggy knee breeches, of a type particularly popular in the early 20th century.
    • Five men and a woman, two young girls,[…], and a boy […] are at the machines sewing knickerbockers, “knee-pants” in the Ludlow Street dialect.1890, Jacob A[ugust] Riis, “The Sweaters of Jewtown”, in How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, page 125
    • […] and some gems that represent the tasseled garment that the leader wears show it in a distinctly religious connection. On a gem from Zakro it [the sistrum] is being being carried by a man who does not wear the loin-cloth, but a baggy kind of knickerbockers like the Moslem trousers of to-day.1907, Ronald M. Burrows, The Discoveries In Crete, page 37

Noun (2) capitalized: Knickerbockers

Knickerbockers

  1. (archaic, historical, plural) plural of Knickerbocker; New Yorkers, particularly descendants of its original Dutch settlers
  2. (uncommon) The formal name of the New York Knicks, a team in the National Basketball Association
  3. (historical) A short-lived 19th-century baseball team in New York

knickerbockers meaning in Hindi and Punjabi

knickerbockers in Hindi

knickerbockers
निकर nikar, जाँघिया jāṅghiyā, जांघिया jāṅghiyā

knickerbockers in Punjabi

knickerbockers
ਨਿੱਕਰ nikkar

Forms of knickerbockers

attributiveknickerbocker

Origin of knickerbockers

From Knickerbocker + -s, after the short breeches worn by Diedrich Knickerbocker in George Cruikshank's illustrations of Washington Irving's 1809 A History of New York.

See Knickerbocker.

Words formed from knickerbockers

Questions about knickerbockers

What does knickerbockers mean?
Knickerbockers means men's or boys' baggy knee breeches, of a type particularly popular in the early 20th century.
What is knickerbockers in Hindi?
Knickerbockers in Hindi is निकर (nikar), जाँघिया (jāṅghiyā), जांघिया (jāṅghiyā). See Knickerbockers meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is knickerbockers?
Knickerbockers is a noun.
How do you pronounce knickerbockers?
Knickerbockers is pronounced /ˈnɪkəbɒkəz/ (UK).

Words near knickerbockers in the dictionary

  1. knicker drawers
  2. knickerbocker
  3. knickerbocker glories
  4. knickerbocker glory
  5. knickerbockered
  6. knickerbockers
  7. knickered
  8. knickerless
  9. knickerlessness
  10. knickers
  11. knickies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: knickerbockers (page history and authors); Knickerbockers (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-knickerbockers.wav.

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