Cutting Slacks

“Cut me some slack” I thought to myself a few minutes ago.

But now, when I was going to tell you about whatever it was from which I wanted my slack to be cut, I had this strangely urgent new thought:

Pants used to be called slacks.

Ergo, aside from wondering about the esoteric process that must be involved in “cutting” which to me means slicing or removing, in order to provide “slack” which to me means looseness, or my general Philosophy of Life, aside from all that nonsense now I’m sitting here trying to work out (without Google) these imponderable conundrums:

Why pants were called slacks.

And almost more importantly, why did that stop?

To be fair, nobody says “trousers” anymore either. I miss that. “Trousers” is a cute word. Go on, say it now. Confuse the people around you. They’re just Starbucks snobs anyhow. They’ll pretend they didn’t hear you.

Where was I? Right. Slacks. I associate that term with the 1950s and 60s.

(And before you say another word, any word, let me assure you I wasn’t even born yet in the 50s. So there. Hmph.)

Anyhow, if it was right after whenever men wore tights then it would make sense to call trousers “slacks” because they’re slacker than tights. But men’s tights were over after the Victorian era (Prince Albert, anyone? Not that I was born yet then either) way too far before the 1950s to be relevant here.

Yes, yes, yes, I know. I can Google it. I’m not going to. I will either figure this out for myself or get distracted by another piece of meaningless trivia.

Come on, cut me some slack here.