Now only Hist. [f. TRUNK (sb. or v.1) + HOSE.
The sense of ‘trunk’ here, as in the later trunk-breeches, and the earlier TRUNK sb. 17, appears to be uncertain. Various suggestions have been made, e.g., that trunk refers to the trunk of the body, or that it is TRUNK sb. 13, ‘a hollow tube or pipe’; or that it is = truncate or truncated, as being, as it were, cut short. Early explanations have not been found: the term may have been of vulgar origin.]
Full bag-like breeches covering the hips and upper thighs, and sometimes stuffed with wool or the like, worn in the 16th and early 17th c.
1637. Heywood, Royall King, Epil. 9. Those Trunke-hose, which now the age doth scorn, Were all in fashion, and with frequence worne.
1694. Ld. Molesworth, Acc. Denmark, 162. In the habit of the North-Holland Boors, with great Trunk-hose, short Doublets.
1735. Byrom, Jrnl. & Lit. Rem. (1855), I. II. 616. Put on my boots and coat and trunk-hose.
1907. Verney Mem., I. 53. His … trunk hose slashed and lined with dull red.
b. attrib., in sense ‘wearing trunk-hose’; hence, old-fashioned, out-of-date.
a. 1643. W. Cartwright, Ordinary, II. i. (1651), 24. The trunck-hose Justices will try all means To bind you to the Peace.
1647. J. Berkenhead, Pref. Verses, in Beaumont & Fletcher’s Wks., e j b. You Two thought fit To weare just Robes, and leave off Trunk-hose-Wit.
Hence † Trunk-hosed a., wearing trunk-hose.
1621. Fletcher, Wild Goose Chase, V. v. I would the trunk-hos’d woman would go with me.
1631. Brathwait, Whimzies, Metall-man, 61. A Metall-man … that walking trunk-hos’d goblin.
