Last year’s word was a heavily sarcastic “Charming!” (the stock response to anything from “your face needs washing” to “could you make your bed?”), which was at least an improvement on the previous year’s “Okay ducky, don’t get your knickers in a twist”.ĭon’t Get Your Knickers in a Twist is the title of an X-rated film mentioned, for example, in the cinema programs published in The Observer (London) of Sunday 11 th February 1973. When you read this letter I can guess what your reaction will be: eyes cast up to heaven, shoulders lifted in a slow shrug, your verdict will emerge in one word: “Pathetic!” In the letter to her eleven-year-old daughter published in the Evening Chronicle ( Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland) of Thursday 17 th May 1973, the novelist Lee Langley (born 1932) confirmed that the phrase gained currency in 1971: The second-earliest instance of the phrase is from the Morning Star (London) of Saturday 26 th June 1971:īritain’s Foreign Office mandarins have had their knickers in a twist for the past fortnight over publication of the secret Pentagon papers about the Vietnam war.
– Andy (appearing on the doorstep with two glasses of brandy): Don’t get yer knickers in a twist, mate – I ’aven’t paid for this, either.
– Rent collector: Grr! Grrr! Yer can’t afford t’ pay yer debts but yer can afford t’ drink brandy!! – Andy (from inside the house): Simmer down, lad – Come inside an’ we’ll discuss what I owe yer over a brandy. The earliest occurrence that I have found of to get one’s knickers in a twist is from the comic strip Andy Capp, by the British cartoonist Reginald Smyth (1917-98), published in the Daily Mirror (London) of Tuesday 26 th January 1971-a rent collector is at Andy’s door: The Frate has to prove his doctrines by not being burned: he is to walk through the fire, and come out on the other side sound and whole.” “Nay, Goro,” said a sleek shopkeeper, compassionately, “ thou hast got thy legs into twisted hose there. “It’s the Frate’s doctrines that he’s to prove by being burned,” said that large public character Goro. The English novelist George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans – 1819-80) had already used this image in Romola (London, 1863)-Fra Francesco, a Franciscan preacher, has challenged the Dominican preacher Girolamo Savonarola (1452-98) to walk through the fire so as to prove the divine origin of his doctrines by coming out unhurt: In this phrase, twisted clothing is a metaphor for mental confusion.
In British English, knickers (short for knickerbockers) denotes short underpants worn by women or girls.
The jocular British-English phrase to get one’s knickers in a twist means to become unduly agitated or angry.
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