What it really means
Every generation has a name for trousers that are too tight. On Victorian streets, they were gas-pipes.
J. Redding Ware recorded it in Passing English of the Victorian Era (1909) as street slang, with a definition that sounds like a raised eyebrow: Name given to trousers when tight. Not a style, notice. A condition — trousers when tight.
The picture is easy to see. Gas was one of the great utilities of the Victorian city, piped under the streets and up into houses to feed the lamps. Its pipes were narrow, straight and rigid. A leg cased in close-fitting trouser cloth, with no break and no give, looks very like one.
Ware then does something characteristic of his book: he looks across the Channel for a comparison. In France, he notes, when fashion made the hem of the trouser widen out, the style was called pied d'éléphant — elephant's foot — to which it has a fair resemblance. So the two countries had one joke each, from opposite ends of the trouser.
The words for this keep changing — drainpipes, stovepipes, skinny jeans — but the instinct behind them has not. When clothes cling, onlookers reach for plumbing.
Where it comes from
- 1909
Ware's Passing English of the Victorian Era: 'Gas-pipes (Street). Name given to trousers when tight.'
In real life
- He turned up to the wedding in gas-pipes so tight he couldn't sit down for the speeches.
- Every few decades the gas-pipes come back into fashion, and every few decades someone's dad says they look painful.
- She took one look at his new jeans and said, 'Gas-pipes. Very brave.'
Questions
Q01What does gas-pipes mean in Victorian slang?
Tight trousers. J. Redding Ware's Passing English of the Victorian Era (1909) records it as street slang: 'Name given to trousers when tight.'
Q02Why gas pipes?
Because of the shape. Gas lighting was piped into Victorian streets and homes, and a narrow, straight trouser leg looks like a length of pipe.
Q03Is there a word for the opposite?
Ware mentions one, from France: when fashion widened the hem of the trouser, the style was called pied d'éléphant — elephant's foot.
Sources
- J. Redding Ware, Passing English of the Victorian Era (1909), full text — 'Gas-pipes (Street)'.
- Mental Floss — Victorian slang list (includes gas-pipes).