You can’t wear one leg each from two different pairs of jeans and go about your daily business, like you could for two pairs of shoes or socks, each of which is independent from the other, albeit left and right specific in various cases.
The same is true for a pair of reading glasses.
Whilst it’s obvious that both glasses and jeans (and pants in general) are referred to as being a pair, due to the two legs and eyes aspect, we don’t refer to a jumper as a pair of jumpers, unless there’s physically four sleeves attached to two bodies.
Why is that and where else does this occur?
My two cents, from a french perspectice : we say “a pair of scissors” and “a pair of glasses” but never “a pair of jeans”. For the glasses, it kinda make sense since you can wear only one glass at a time though it’s highly unpractical. For the scissors it make sense if you consider one scissor to be one blade with a handle. I perfectly understand your rant on the jeans point.
Apologies if this was perceived as a rant … I’m genuinely interested in discovering why we refer to a pair of jeans.
As for glasses. In the time of monocles that might have made sense, but I’ve never seen anyone wear two of them.
Im not 100% sure what rant means, I didnt want to imply negativity, sorry for that. This really felt like a legitimate remark to me!
Yup, for the glasses, it’s definitely an explanation of why we used to call them that way, the justification does not have much sense nowadays.
Rant:
Source: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/rant
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