unblouse
English edit
Etymology edit
Pronunciation edit
Verb edit
unblouse (third-person singular simple present unblouses, present participle unblousing, simple past and past participle unbloused)
- (military) To untuck (leggings from footwear); to make (pants or trousers) unrestricted or untightened at the ankle, often as a sign of rank or service.
- 2002, Jack Allsup, Mountains of Hope, page 50:
- Some straight legs caught a trooper at the post exchange (PX) one day and made him unblouse his boots.
- 2003, Edward F. Fitzgerald, Bank's Bandits, page 162:
- "Alright men. Lay your ponchos out on the ground and take everything out of your rucksacks. Empty your pockets, too. Everything goes on the poncho. Hurry up! We haven't got all day.
"You, Parker! Unblouse those boots. Do it! What's all this shit? Cans of Spam. Tuna fish. Nice try, Asshole. Okay, everybody. Unblouse those boots."
- 2004, Ed Ruggero, Combat Jump: The Young Men Who Led the Assault Into Fortress Europe, July 1943, page 89:
- Not only were the soldiers not allowed to tell anyone what was happening, but they had to remove their shoulder patches and the airborne patches from their hats, take off their jump wings, and unblouse their trousers to hide their jump boots.
- 2006, Major Richard D. Winters, Beyond Band of Brothers, page 37:
- In front of the entire regiment, the condemned trooper was forced to unblouse his trousers, remove his airborne boots, and replace them with regular shoes.
- (transitive and intransitive) To remove one's blouse (from).
- 1922, James Joyce, Ulysses:
- Am I awfully sunburnt? Miss Bronze unbloused her neck.
- 2001, Dario Fo, Franca Rame, We won't pay! We won't pay! and other plays: the collected plays of Dario Fo, page 173:
- Unblouse yourself and be getting your clothes off.
- 2015, Jonathan Bayliss, Prologo, →ISBN:
- The thin little man with a sharp face straw hat and cane told it in a patter, his voice almost too scratchy to hear in the littered theater rustling and seething with impatience, not much of a crowd to say the least waiting for blowsy Venus to unblouse who had something to show (beside whom Hecuba would have looked like a svelte dryad), valiantly pretending he had the house in his hand as he took expert pratfalls, though in truth all but a decibel or two of the noise that could be identified as response was provided by the two-piece orchestra the straightman and himself.