See breath and britches in All languages combined, or Wiktionary
Download JSON data for breath and britches meaning in English (5.0kB)
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"ref": "1990, Lee K. Abbott, “Why I Live in Hanoi”, in Dreams of Distant Lives, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, page 109",
"text": "[…] San Antonio Mexicans named Cisco and Pancho, both in black-market sombreros. They were skinny—all breath and britches—and short-timers, soon to go home.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
"glosses": [
"The minimal qualities that make one a person (especially a man), either",
"physically (implying extreme thinness) or,"
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"(Southern US, figurative) The minimal qualities that make one a person (especially a man), either",
"physically (implying extreme thinness) or,"
],
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"ref": "1957, Frank Yerby, chapter 22, in Fairoaks, New York: Pocket Books, published 1963, page 295",
"text": "“[…] I don’t know a blessed thing but planting. What does she expect me to do? Hire out as an overseer?”\nI would, Guy thought clearly, coldly; before I’d accept the slightest favor from anybody. But you haven’t got that, have you, Kil? Reckon you never were anything more than breath and britches.",
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{
"ref": "1966, Margaret Walker, Jubilee, New York: Houghton Mifflin, published 2016, Part I, Chapter 3, p. 54",
"text": "Man ain’t nothing but trouble, just breath and britches and trouble. Don’t let him feel all over you, now, don’t let a no-good man touch you, else he’ll big you up sho-nuff.",
"type": "quotation"
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{
"ref": "1981, John Edgar Wideman, “The Songs of Reba Love Jackson”, in Damballah, New York: Houghton Mifflin, published 1998, page 122",
"text": "We’s all God’s creatures and it ain’t in the Bible to sit in the back of no buses or bow down to any man what ain’t nothing but breath and britches.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
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"The minimal qualities that make one a person (especially a man), either",
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"id": "en-breath_and_britches-en-noun-d0q-YMid",
"raw_glosses": [
"(Southern US, figurative) The minimal qualities that make one a person (especially a man), either",
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],
"tags": [
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"ref": "1937, Zora Neale Hurston, chapter 2, in Their Eyes Were Watching God, University of Illinois Press, published 1978, page 27",
"text": "[…] Ah don’t want no trashy nigger, no breath-and-britches, lak Johnny Taylor usin’ yo’ body to wipe his foots on.",
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],
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"A man of no substance."
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"(Southern US, figurative) A man of no substance."
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"(Southern US, figurative) The minimal qualities that make one a person (especially a man), either",
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"type": "quotation"
},
{
"ref": "1966, Margaret Walker, Jubilee, New York: Houghton Mifflin, published 2016, Part I, Chapter 3, p. 54",
"text": "Man ain’t nothing but trouble, just breath and britches and trouble. Don’t let him feel all over you, now, don’t let a no-good man touch you, else he’ll big you up sho-nuff.",
"type": "quotation"
},
{
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"text": "[…] Ah don’t want no trashy nigger, no breath-and-britches, lak Johnny Taylor usin’ yo’ body to wipe his foots on.",
"type": "quotation"
}
],
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"A man of no substance."
],
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"(Southern US, figurative) A man of no substance."
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-09 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (4d5d0bb and edd475d). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
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