157. Boxers and Briefs

Marco: Hello, everyone! And welcome to EnglishPod. My name is Marco.

Catherine: Hi, guys! My name is Catherine. And today we're talking about something that is a little bit private.

Marco: That's right. But very necessary to learn in English because it's very very useful.

Catherine: That's right. So, we're talking about clothing,more specifically, underwear, so the clothes you wear under your clothes.

Marco: That's right. So, let's just jump into the dialogue. Let's see what happens today. We'll be back in a bit.

A: Lily, I found a pair of men's boxers in the laundry machine this morning.

B: What?! That's weird. Are they your boyfriend's?

A: Nah, Kevin only wears briefs. Plus, this pair is extra small.

B: What do they look like?

A: They're light blue with thin pink stripes... Oh, and there's a Snoopy on it, which is hilarious, ha ha...

B: Those are my undies!

Marco: All right. So, a lot of great vocabulary, let's take a look at that now on 'language takeaway'.

Language takeaway

Catherine: The first thing we have here in 'language takeaway' is actually very interesting, Marco, because we don't say one underwear or one boxers. We say 'a pair of', just like pants, a pair of pants, or a pair of underwear.

Marco: A pair of pants,a pair of shorts, of socks.The same thing goes for underwear. So, I really don't know why, because it's one piece.

Catherine: So, uh, pants, but basically you have two holes, two places for your legs. So,anything with your legs, your socks, your shoes, your pants, your underwear...

Marco: You need a pair...

Catherine: It's a pair, because you've got the both sides, left and right.

Marco: All right, you got a pair of men's boxers. Now, before we describe the underwear part, let's take a look at this other machine. A laundry machine.

Catherine: Okay, you know what a machine is,it's usually something that uses electricity to help us with a task or a job, but a laundry machine is special because it helps us clean our laundry. What kind of things are laundry?

Marco: So, anything that's your clothes... So, basically,it's also called a washing machine, right? So, laundry machine or washing machine. Same thing.

Catherine: It uses water and soap to wash your clothes.

Marco: That's right. Now let's get into the type of underwear here, specifically for men. Usually, we have boxers,boxer shorts.

Catherine: That's right. So, shorts means that they're not long, they're short, but boxers or boxer shorts, as you say, are usually pretty loose. They're not very tight and they're longer than the other kinds of underwear we have.

Marco: Okay, so, boxers area type of underwear that men wear under their clothes. And as you say, they are pretty much shorts. But they're called boxers, or you can call them boxer shorts. Now, the... I guess the classic or the common form of men's underwear are called briefs.

Catherine: Briefs. Now these are smaller than boxers and they're tighter, okay?They are usually made out of some kind of material that stretches.

You can pull them a little bit. And this is, again, a smaller version, a smaller kind of underwear.

Marco: That's right. So, boxers are more like shorts. Briefs are kind of...

And briefs are not really shorts, the are more like a... I guess kind of like a swimming suit, they look like...

Catherine: Yeah, like a bathing suit bottom for men.

Marco: Okay. Now, that's it, right? Okay, so,both these things we could actually describe as undies.

Catherine: That's right. So, undies is a common, spoken language way of saying underwear. So, it's very casual. It's usually something that we say with our family or friends, especially moms like to say this with their kids.

Marco: Undies...

Catherine: All right, honey, I'm gonna buy you some new undies this week. And of course, as a child, you feel very embarrassed. Undies is a way to say underwear.

Marco: All right. Okay, so, that's all the vocab that we have for you on language takeaway. Why don't we listen to our dialogue again? And we'll be back in a bit with fluency builder.

A: Lily, I found a pair of men's boxers in the laundry machine this morning.

B: What?! That's weird. Are they your boyfriend's?

A: Nah, Kevin only wears briefs. Plus, this pair is extra small.

B: What do they look like?

A: They're light blue with thin pink stripes... Oh, and there's a Snoopy on it,which ishilarious, haha...

B: Those are my undies!

Marco: We're back. So, now let's take a look at some descriptive words in 'fluency builder'.

Fluency builder

Catherine: All right, as you said, Marco, we have a lot of great phrases today and some words for describing underwear and you can describe other things with these words as well. The first one we have is a phrase—extra small.

Marco: So, when you buy underwear, the sizes, you sometimes get small, extra small, large,medium, but it's just the way of describing how big it is.

Catherine: Right. So, you know, the S, the M, and the L, are small, medium, and large. But if you see the XS, that's extra small, it means it's very small. All right, we also have XL, which is extra large.

Marco: That's right. Okay. Now that we've described the size, now we're gonna describe a little bit of how they look like, the colors and maybe any characteristics. So, the first thing that we see is the color is light blue.

Catherine: Okay, so, we've got blue, which is normal blue. We have light blue, which is maybe the color of the sky on a beautiful summer day. There's also... We didn't hear it in today's dialogue, but there's another color. It's dark blue, which isalmost more like purple or black.

Marco: That's right. So, this is the way of describing a color. Now it can be for any color except white. You don't really say light white or dark white.

Catherine: So, you could say light green, dark green, light orange, dark orange.

Marco: Okay. And now some characteristics, they had some thin pink stripes. So, we have the word here — thin.

Catherine: So,not fat, thin.

Marco: Pink, we have the color, but what are stripes?

Catherine: Stripes are very common design for clothes and you often see stripes. They're like the lines. Okay? That means that you have different lines that are pink. You often see stripes on flags. So, for example, the American flag has red and white stripes.

Marco: Okay, very good. So, as you said, there are lines. Yeah, usually in clothing, you can find maybe shirts, they have vertical stripes or sometimes even horizontal stripes.

Catherine: But these undies are quite unique. They're very special because they have pink stripes.

Marco: That's right. Okay, so that's all the language we have for you. Why don't we listen to our dialogue one last time? And we'll be back in a little bit.

A: Lily, I found a pair of men's boxers in the laundry machine this morning.

B: What?! That's weird. Are they your boyfriend's?

A: Nah, Kevin only wears briefs. Plus, this pair is extra small.

B: What do they look like?

A: They're light blue with thin pink stripes... Oh, and there's a Snoopy on it,which ishilarious, haha...

B: Those are my undies!

Marco: All right, so, in this case, we're talking about men's boxer shorts, becausethere was a confusion about the boyfriend. But women also wear boxer shorts.It's very popular now among women.

Catherine: Yeah,it's usually something that women wear over their underwear. Womendon't really wear boxer shorts as underwear. Women's underwear is smaller.It's like men's briefs.

Marco: Okay. So, if a girl wears boxers and it's usually for maybe if they're just around the house and you don't want to wear pants and you don't want to wear shorts, you can just wear a pair of comfortable boxer shorts.

Catherine: Exactly, like they werepajamas.

Marco: Okay. And actually I think a lot of girls also use boxer shorts as pajamas, right?

Catherine: That's right. They're comfortable and they'relight and they're usuallymade from cotton, which isa nice material to sleep in.

Marco: Now, when we're talking about briefs, there is also another way that I've heard that they're called sometimes a more...maybe funny way of calling them that some people say they're calledtighty-whities.

Catherine: That's right. This is usuallysomething we say to joke, because in America, at least many men like to wear, young men like to wear boxers.

Marco: Right.

Catherine: So, they call briefs, tighty-whities.

Marco: Because usually their briefs are just white.They're plain. They don't haveany design or any other color.

Catherine: Now they're plain and they're white, usually or gray, and they're tight, not like boxers. So, the casual name, this is not something you wanna say to your English teacher, by the way. The casual name or the funny name is tighty-whities.

Marco: Tighty-whities. And actually this is a very interesting, because withnewer generations, I think, men are wearing boxers instead of briefs.Before I think the only option was briefs.

Catherine: Exactly.

Marco: But now boxershave grown more and more popular. And I think when you're a little kid, your mom always buys you little briefs and everything. But then when you're a teenager, I think you justswitch over to boxers.

Catherine: It's not as cool anymore to wear briefs.

Marco: Yeah, I thinkit's the whole fact of how kids sometimes dress with the saggy or baggy pants, and so they like to show their boxers...

Catherine: That's right.

Marco: ...underneath for some reason.

Catherine: I don't really understand it, but if you do, let us know, our website isenglishpod.com. We're gonna have all the vocabulary and stuff on the website. So, check it out.

Marco: All right, we'll see you guys there.

Catherine: Bye!

Marco: Bye!