Tights

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Tights \Tights\, n. pl.
     Close-fitting garments, especially for the lower part of the
     body and the legs.
     [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:



  tights
       n 1: skintight knit hose covering the body from the waist to the
            feet worn by acrobats and dancers and as stockings by
            women and girls [syn: {leotards}]
       2: man's garment of the 16th and 17th centuries; worn with a
          doublet [syn: {hose}]

From THE DEVIL'S DICTIONARY ((C)1911 Released April 15 1993) [devils]:

  TIGHTS, n.  An habiliment of the stage designed to reinforce the
  general acclamation of the press agent with a particular publicity. 
  Public attention was once somewhat diverted from this garment to Miss
  Lillian Russell's refusal to wear it, and many were the conjectures as
  to her motive, the guess of Miss Pauline Hall showing a high order of
  ingenuity and sustained reflection.  It was Miss Hall's belief that
  nature had not endowed Miss Russell with beautiful legs.  This theory
  was impossible of acceptance by the male understanding, but the
  conception of a faulty female leg was of so prodigious originality as
  to rank among the most brilliant feats of philosophical speculation! 
  It is strange that in all the controversy regarding Miss Russell's
  aversion to tights no one seems to have thought to ascribe it to what
  was known among the ancients as "modesty."  The nature of that
  sentiment is now imperfectly understood, and possibly incapable of
  exposition with the vocabulary that remains to us.  The study of lost
  arts has, however, been recently revived and some of the arts
  themselves recovered.  This is an epoch of _renaissances_, and there
  is ground for hope that the primitive "blush" may be dragged from its
  hiding-place amongst the tombs of antiquity and hissed on to the
  stage.