wear the trousers
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
be in control or have authority in a relationship
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
là người kiểm soát hoặc có thẩm quyền trong một mối quan hệ
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: have trousers on
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
I'd like to take a bet on it that the mother wears the trousers.’
Dad was a shy man, who wore the trousers and covered his soft centre with a brusque manner and the stern countenance of a bloodhound.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “wear the trousers” mean?
be in control or have authority in a relationship Literally: have trousers on
Is “wear the trousers” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.